Museums of S-Petersburg.

    S-Petersburg is often called the cultural capital of Russia. Many of Russian's finest museums are situated here. The Hermitage for example is one of the worlds greatest and most famous museums. It houses over 2,5 mln works of art. The museums is occupies the winter palace and 5 enjoying buildings. There are more than thousand rooms and halls in the Winter Palace with total area 46 thousand square meters. There are 2 thousand windows 18000 doors. The building is two km in perimeter. As I have already mentioned at preset the Hermitage occupies 5 building which are all connected. The largest of them the Winter Palace was designed by the architect Rastrelly in 1762. Next to it is the little Hermitage built to a design of Vallen de Lamonte in 1764-1767. It is the first and the smallest museums building.

It was built on Katherine the II order to house her collection of pictures. 

Next to the little Hermitage, the old Hermitage was built to accommodate the growing collection. One of the most famous museums of S-Petersburg is the Russian museum. It contains more then 300000 works of art and covers the period from the 11^th century to the present day. 

The history of Russian art is represented in 130 rooms of the museum starting with the splendid collection of ancient Russian icons by Andrey Rublev. The Myhailovsky Palace, which houses the Russian museum was built by Rossi for Grand Duke Mikl, the youngest son of  Pole the I.