Hermitage Museum

The Hermitage is one of the largest museums in the world and is located in Russia. Born as an annex of the majestic Winter Palace, it is now a huge museum complex of 66,842 square meters, which houses over 3 million works of art. The heart of the museum is made up of 4 buildings dating back to different eras, connected to each other by galleries and almost a thousand rooms.

The Hermitage of St. Petersburg, whose name derives from the French term "ermitage" with the meaning of "hermitage", was born from the desire of the Empress Catherine the Great to have an isolated place where you can spend time away from the social life of the city. Furthermore, the museum was probably also born out of its desire to manifest the greatness of the Russian Empire.

Its construction began within the walls of the Winter Palace, Rastrelli's most important project and official residence of the imperial family from 1732 to 1917. The building is a riot of green and ocher in full Baroque style and color despite the fire that largely destroyed it in 1837. Initially, the color of the building was yellow and white, but then it acquired the color of aqua green with the construction of the new buildings. The real history of the Hermitage museum began in the eighteenth century with the private collection of 225 paintings of Empress Catherine II and in the twentieth century it became one of the largest museums in the world.

Pushkin Museum

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow owes its origin to Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetáiev, a professor who wanted to contribute to education by creating a museum. He worked hard to make this dream come true and, in the end, he succeeded in obtaining the land that would house the museum.
After its inauguration in 1912, the Pushkin Museum developed and grew in tandem with the city, which was transformed following the events that determined the history and personality of the country.

The October Revolution marked a turning point in the history of this museum which, after being nationalized, saw its collection expand dramatically. Many of his works, in fact, came from abandoned villas and museums that closed their doors.

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts boasts a rich collection. In fact, it includes over 300,000 works, including drawings and engravings, sculptures from Ancient Egypt, Greek vases, paintings by European artists and numerous Byzantine icons.
Monet, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir and Matisse are just some of the great masters whose works are proudly preserved inside.

Fabergé Museum

The Fabergé Museum, housed in the Shuvalovsky palace on the banks of the Fontanka not far from Nevsky prospect, was inaugurated on November 19, 2013 and opened to the public in the spring of 2014. The museum houses numerous exhibits, among which the egg caps Fabergé donated by the tycoon Victor Feliksovič Veksel'berg, but the icons, silverware, pieces of furniture and of course the splendid interiors of the building completely restored for the first time in its bicentennial history are worthy of note.

The Fabergé eggs in the museum are as follows:

• Egg with hen
• Renaissance egg
• Egg with rose
• Egg of the coronation
• Egg of lilies of the valley
• Egg of the fifteenth anniversary of reign
• Egg with cockerel
• Laurel egg
• Egg of the Order of St. George

Zeffirelli Foundation

The Zeffirelli Collection hosts over 250 works by Maestro Zeffirelli including stage sketches, drawings and costume figures. The exhibition itinerary runs chronologically through the prose theater, the opera in music and the cinema. The great artistic personalities who have collaborated with him and the theaters of the world that have welcomed him mark the passage through the Collection.

The first rooms are thus dedicated to the two figures who most influenced Franco Zeffirelli's training and career beginnings. The mentor and teacher Luchino Visconti opens the path of the Zeffirelli Collection followed by the room dedicated to Maria Callas.

The section of the Zeffirelli Collection dedicated to Opera in Music opens with "playful operas" and Zeffirelli's professional partnership with Callas. Continuing with the first successes in America and at the MET in New York, we understand the unmistakable contribution of Zeffirelli director and set designer to the world of Opera in Music.

The greatest interpreters of Belcanto thus alternate through the halls of the Zeffirelli Museum, in the stage photos taken in the major theaters in the world, from the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, to the MET, from the Vienna State Opera to the Verona Arena up to the last posthumous work. In fact, the narration of the Opera in Musica La Traviata of 2019 at the Verona Arena concludes.