Every year on 7 December, the State Hermitage celebrates the Orthodox feast day of Saint Catherine, in honour of whom the museum’s founder, Empress Catherine the Great, took her name at the time of her Orthodox baptism.
Traditionally to mark the day, which for several years now has been celebrated as a city-wide occasion, the Hermitage makes special presents to its visitors. Since this year Saint Catherine’s Day falls on a Monday, which is the museum’s day off, the day of free entry to the Hermitage will be Tuesday, 8 December 2020. On that day, all individual visitors who book tickets will have free entry to the Main Museum Complex, the General Staff building and the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory.
Visitors can view not only the museums main displays but also the newly-opened exhibitions: “Fabergé: Jeweller to the Imperial Court”, “Oman: the Land of Frankincense” and “Two Palmyras. Archaeology” in the Main Museum Complex. Two more exhibition projects devoted to the connections between Palmyra and Saint Petersburg – “Two Palmyras. Architecture” and “Two Palmyras: real and virtual” – are included in the route for a visit to the General Staff building.
Guests of the museum following Fixed Route №2 around the Main Museum Complex will be able to visit the exhibition marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Vinogradov, the inventor of Russian porcelain. In the exhibition “A Renaissance Model of the Universe. An Astronomical Clock in the State Hermitage Museum” they can see a complex device that is one of the earliest “mechanical presentations” of the structure of the cosmos. Visitors can also admire exquisite statuettes and small sculptures in the exhibition “Art Deco Figurines from the Collections of Sergey Morozov and Evgeny Gerasimov”, and much else besides.
of the Imperial Porcelain Factory will be free of charge for all individual visitors.
Those who wish to visit the museum without paying on this day must obtain a ticket through the special website – tickets.hermitagemuseum.org/en/. On the site you can chose one of the museum locations and one of the suggested fixed routes, as well as a time slot. Free-of-charge entry tickets on this day are available only for those routes that do not entail guiding services: fixed route No 1 around the Main Museum Complex (entry by way of the Jordan Staircase), fixed route No 2 around the Main Museum Complex (entry by way of the Church Staircase). routes around the General Staff building and the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory. A maximum of four tickets can be included in a single order.
After completing an application on the website, the visitor will receive an e-mail with an electronic ticket that can be printed out or stored on a smartphone. To enter the museum, you need to present the ticket’s barcode to the reader on the turnstile. The electronic ticket is valid for the chosen location and time slot only on the day of the visit.
We remind the reader that the exhibition “The Iron Age. Europe without Borders” in the Manege of the Small Hermitage can be visited free of charge every day that the museum is working.
The State Hermitage looks forward to welcoming its guests but reminds them that according to the new rules everyone entering any of the museum premises must wear individual protection.
