Tourists at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Poster

Tourists crowd into a room featuring a portrait of Tsar Alexander I on horseback in the state Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Portraits of other important Russian figures line the walls. The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture and is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. It was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. I visited the Hermitage during its busiest time of year and saw as many tourists as I did art, so I decided to enjoy the crowd as part of the art, sort of performance art. Otherwise, I would have only photographs of ceilings! The museum's collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors.