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How the Main Russian Museum Creates an Active Cultural Dialogue in the Country.
The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, with its numerous buildings, is almost like the Vatican City in Rome: a separate city-state within a city. Yet, such a great museum actually exists beyond territorial boundaries, considering its impact on Russian and global culture, as well as satellite centres in other cities.
It asserts its global presence in both its home city and throughout Russia, primarily through two large-scale projects: The Hermitage Days in St. Petersburg, with grand light shows on Palace Square, and Regional Hermitage Days that start in March and move across the country each year, covering new territories each time.
While we travel to St. Petersburg during summer’s White Nights, visits to the banks of Neva River in winter should perhaps be timed to coincide with the Hermitage Days. Held from late November until mid-December, this event features a unique and very intensive programme aimed at audiences ranging widely, including children and adults, regular museum-goers, and those who rarely visit museums. During these days, there are new exhibitions and permanent collections, ceremonies, concerts, competitions (including the annual competition Create an Exhibit for the Hermitage, which continues the old tradition of making New Year and Christmas ornaments by hand); signing agreements, holding meetings and press conferences. Additionally, there is a traditional online meeting with Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, who answers questions from subscribers, summarizes the year’s results, and discusses future plans.
7 December is a significant date in the December calendar, when the Hermitage Day is celebrated. This celebration marks the day of St. Catherine, after whom Empress Catherine II was named when she was baptized. On this occasion, typically several exhibition projects open, including the main exhibit of the year. In 2024, it featured a large-scale exhibition called Landscape of the Soul. Caspar David Friedrich and Russia marking the 250th anniversary of one of the most important Romantic artists. In addition, on 7 December, the museum usually offers visitors a special gift: free admission tickets to their exposition complexes (booked in advance via the website).
The Hermitage Days also sees another bright event: a multimedia show in Palace Square. Animation consisting of dozens of light rays colours the façades of the Main Staff Building and the Guards Corps Headquarters. The Hermitage staged its first light spectacle in 2014, celebrating a quarter-millennium of its history. Then, more than 600,000 spectators visited Palace Square, and, ever since, multimedia performances have become a new tradition. Their theme changes every year. For example, in 2023, the show commemorated the 320th anniversary of St. Petersburg’s founding; in 2024, it the 225th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth; while, in 2025, it marked Tchaikovsky’s 185th birthday. A twenty-minute performance on the façade of the Main Staff Building, divided into thirteen episodes accompanied by music by Tchaikovsky, covered the composer’s entire life from childhood to worldwide recognition.
Also included in the Hermitage Days programme is the final stage of the All-Russia Modern Media Arts Contest Country of LIGHT, which took place for the fourth time in 2025. Works by the finalists were exhibited on the façade of the Guards Corps Headquarters on 6 and 7 December. A jury headed by Mikhail Piotrovsky chose three winners to receive cash prizes of RUB 1 million, 700 thousand, and 400 thousand.
“Each year during the Hermitage Days, light shows are held on Palace Square”, notes Mikhail Piotrovsky. “It’s a perfect illustration of how a museum festival can turn into a citywide event. Each time it’s different, not only owing to imaginative concepts and engaging sound arrangements but also thanks to modern technology.” Illuminating the skies above St. Petersburg, the Hermitage transports locals and visitors alike from the dark December dusk into a vibrant, colourful world. Bringing us from darkness to light is ultimately the mission of culture and art.
New technologies used during the December celebrations have become a particular story for the Hermitage. It was among the first Russian institutions to adopt them actively and it now has a major project titled Magnificent Hermitage. This digital exposition created using 3D mapping, AV installations, holograms, and AI allows viewers to walk through Hermitage interiors, examine painting, sculpture, and applied arts masterpieces, while immersing themselves in the atmosphere of the museum. For instance, residents of Nizhny Novgorod were able to experience being inside the Hermitage without leaving their hometown during the summer of 2025, when Magnificent Hermitage spent two months at the Art Space Tseh in Nizhny Novgorod.
Magnificent Hermitage forms part of a bigger project called Celestial Hermitage. The museum has been working towards creating its complete digital twin, providing global access to exhibits and all museum events. Art truly shouldn’t have borders or geographical restrictions.
Stepping outside the confines of its walls, into the city, toward people, into the world, onto the Internet, breaking away from specific geographical ties, is the core idea behind the concept known as Greater Hermitage. The museum opened its first exhibition centre in Kazan in 2005 and later, in Amsterdam, in 2009.
The Greater Hermitage Project aims for expansion in terms of both territory and audience. The concept envisions a global presence, open storage facilities, functioning as a forum spilling out beyond the limits of exhibition halls, maintaining a continuous dialogue with diverse audiences and society in general. All this happens within the scope of regional Hermitage Days.
Rich exhibition programmes, educational lectures, creative workshops, excursions, thematic events, and roundtables mark the arrival of the Hermitage in regions. Special museum days mainly occur at five satellite centres: Hermitage–Kazan, Hermitage–Vyborg, Hermitage–Siberia (Omsk), Hermitage–Ural (Yekaterinburg), and Hermitage–Eurasia (Orenburg). Other partner cities occasionally join in with the Hermitage Days too. In 2025, the cities selected were Volgograd, Petrozavodsk, Kaluga, as well as Kaliningrad and Vladivostok, which had already hosted the 10th Hermitage Days. Both Vladivostok and Kaluga are also scheduled to open Hermitage Centers. As noted by Mikhail Piotrovsky in our magazine interview, “the scheme for Hermitage satellite centres creates conditions for new world-class museums to emerge in Russia”.
Additionally, in September 2025, during the 11th St. Petersburg International United Cultures Forum, agreements were reached regarding overseas satellite centres in South Korea and Oman. By 2026, the museum intends to showcase its digital programme Magnificent Hermitage in Korea, with multimedia components forming the basis of the Korean centre.
Whenever the Hermitage arrives in various cities with exhibitions, lectures, and workshops, it always negotiates themes with local partners, designing exhibitions and programmes tailored to local cultural traditions and the interests of inhabitants in specific regions. So, the Hermitage transforms itself not just into a capital-based Petersburgian institution but also becomes something more personal and relatable locally. It decentralizes cultural activity that is traditionally concentrated in Russia’s two capitals, shaping the national cultural discourse and establishing cultural exchange.
The Hermitage is a laboratory of European experience in Russian space, a place where Russia had engaged in dialogue with the world and itself for three centuries. Here, the national and the international are not opposed but balanced. Through its Regional Hermitage Days in other cities and countries, the museum adds regional and local dimensions to the global and nationwide conversation, thus adding to the complexity of discussions, generating new topics, and creating new meanings.
