🖼 State Hermitage (Winter Palace)

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Rastrelli's turquoise-and-white palace on the Neva — the tsars' main residence, now one of the largest museums in the world.

The Hermitage dates from 1764, when 317 paintings of the merchant Gotzkowsky were handed to Catherine II from Berlin in settlement of a debt.
The present Winter Palace is the fifth one: built in 1754–1762, it became the tallest residential building in St Petersburg and had about 1,500 rooms.
The fire of 1837 destroyed all the palace's interiors, but under Stasov and Bryullov it was restored in just two years.
The Jordan Entrance is named after the "Jordan" ice hole: at Epiphany the royal family went out through it onto the ice of the Neva.
On 5 February 1880 the Narodnaya Volya member Stepan Khalturin set off a bomb in the palace, aiming at Alexander II: 11 guard soldiers died, the emperor was unharmed.
From October 1915 to November 1917 a hospital named for Tsarevich Alexei operated in the Winter Palace's state rooms.
The Hermitage collection was evacuated during the war, and not a single exhibit was lost.