St Petersburg is called both a city of museums and a museum city. There are over 120 museums here.
Kunstkamera, the first Russian museum, was commissioned by Peter the Great in 1714 and opened to the public in 1719.
The Hermitage started in 1764 with a collection of pictures bought by Catherine II in Berlin. The collection comprised 225 pictures mainly of the Dutch and Flemish school. They were housed in the Zimnv Palace, and by 1774 there were 2.080 canvasses. Private collections were being bought abroad all the time. As well as pictures, they included antiques, works of Western decorative and applied art, weapons, coins and medals and. in the 19th century, archaeological finds.
Currently the State Hermitage is one of the largest museums in the world. Its displays occupy 350 halls. 3.5 million people a year visit the Hermitage. There are works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian. Velazquez. Rubens. Renoir and Matisse, sculptures by Michelangelo and Rodin and other masterpieces of Western European art.
The Russian Museum devoted solely to Russian art, was founded in 1895 and opened in 1898 in the Mikhailovsky Palace. Currently it stores over 320,000 items. The collection of the Russian Museum includes remarkable icons, including those by Andrey Rublev. Art of the 18th and the 19th centuries is represented by the works of such famous Russian artists as Rokotov. Kiprensky, Bryullov. Repin. Surikov. Vrubel Serov and others.
The Railway Transport Museum, the Military Maritime Museum, the A. V. Suvorov Museum and the museum in Pushkin's Apartment were created in the 20th century.
New museums are still being set up today. The Alexander Blok Museum opened in 1980; the Museum in Anna Akhmatova's Apartment and the Museum of the Benua Family opened in 1989. In 1990, the Wax Figures Museum opened in Peterhof. The youngest museum in Petersburg is the Bread Museum, opened in 1993.
32 million people visit Petersburg museums every year.