Hermitage Museum

The Hermitage Museum complex in Saint Petersburg centers on the Winter Palace, a Baroque residence built for the Russian imperial family between 1754 and 1762 to a design by the Italian-Russian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli under Empress Elizabeth. Its green and white facade, with rows of tall windows and rich sculptural ornament along a roofline of urns and statues, exemplifies the exuberant Baroque style favored at the Russian court, and the complex later expanded to include the Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage and Hermitage Theatre, linked together along the embankment of the Neva river. The New Hermitage building, added in the 1840s, is distinguished by a portico of ten monumental granite atlantes carved specifically for the building to support its entrance. Together the linked palace buildings form one of the largest continuous museum complexes in the world by floor area.