225: Winter Palace and the Hermitage from the 1000 places to see before you die book

Before being sent by the daughter of Peter the Great and Great-Shoe-Collector Empress Elizabeth I to Pushkin to design a palace in memory of her mother Catherine I, court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli practised his exuberant over the top embellishment resulting in this icing cake mint green confection of columns, gold leaf, and balustrades in a Russian baroque style- all exercised with not so careful abandon through its 1000 rooms and 117 staircases  of which only a few held Elizabeth's 60,000 shoe collection!

Top of the staircase at the entrance hall

The outside square providing the grand setting for an even grander palace (not in picture)

Where to start- god I had no idea Russia was so rich. I mean when you think about it, it has massive mineral wealth and a dictatorship ensures no issues about cost of labour (albeit under communism which followed everyone prob worked just as hard in miserable conditions otherwise Stalin sent them to a place where they worked for free.) Lets start with the Palace and forget for the moment the Hermitage- as while the latter is located in the former- one should review the palace in its own merits.

The palace on the middle to right of picture- i.e. half of this picture!

And it is mindblowing. Empress Elizabeth really knew how to throw her weight around and, gathering from the portraits, a no mean small multiple of her quite considerable weight was churned out in gold leaf during her time to decorate her palace. Every single room was quite simply beautifully mindblowing. 

The inner courtyard providing entrance to the palace

The most spectacular rooms are the entrance which sets the tone for what will follow and the Great Hall which ran off it.

Detail of the outside

The Great hall...more gold leaf

Details of the painting on the ceiling above the entrance

Heading up the second flight of stairs of the entrance staircase- look at the height of the people compared to the two storey entrance hall

Only half way up the staircase here

Okay, at this stage Ill focus on the Hermitage...although note that most of the rooms holding the collection are actually in the Winter Palace...so you get two things to see for the price of one. The museum has one of the largest collections of works in the world totalling some 3million pieces- and the Winter Palace and 5 other buildings are needed to house the 150,000 odd works of art that are on display.

The 1000 places to see before you die  book says that it contains more than 40 Rembrandts, 40 Rubens, 8 titians, and numerous works by Michelangelo and Leonardo.

Probably my favourite hallway.

Not too sure about the coloured ostrich feathers on their helmets

My carriage awaits

Of course it goes without saying that this is a worthy inclusion in the 1000 places to see before you die book. In fact, Id go as far as to saw that you should fly to Russia if only to see this palace and museum