Original subtitles

Far in Russia's frozen north is St Petersburg.

And on the banks of the Neva river,

stands the State Hermitage Museum.

Its story is a microcosm of Russian history.

The Hermitage has witnessed dramatic events -

war and revolution.

But the art has survived to tell the tale.

For many years, I've been fascinated by the Hermitage

and what makes it unique.

Finally, as a film-maker, I was given unprecedented access

to tell its story.

Through the imperial splendour,

everywhere you're reminded that it's a palace.

The spirit itself and taste is also a monument.

You can feel it in every gallery and we are lucky to have interiors

and to keep the spirit of palace.

You could imagine how the emperors and the empresses were living

in this place, and dancing and doing a lot of other things.

Behind the scenes today, instead of tsars there are museum curators

preserving the art for future generations.

I'll be meeting them and hearing their stories.

I think the Hermitage has

so much more resonance in the heart of a Russian man or woman.

It's more than a museum.

It's really part of the soul of the nation.

I'll be opening doors previously closed to the public,

looking at the history of the building and what makes it tick.

MARCHING MUSIC

In the throne room of the Winter Palace,

the court of St Petersburg gathered

to celebrate the anniversary of the museum.

The Hermitage is one of the largest museums in the world,

a city within a city and a state within a state.

It's a labyrinth of 2,000 rooms

housing over three million objects...

..founded in 1764 by Catherine The Great,

who came to the throne dramatically in a coup d'etat,

taking the title Empress of all the Russias.

You know she told about herself that,

"I'd rather have the man's spirit, not woman's,

"but I don't look mannish

"because together with the mind and character of a man,

"I have an appeal of a pleasant woman."

And that's what we see on her portraits.

'This is a wonderful and very famous portrait of Catherine the Great.

'It's Catherine the Great in military robe

'and one of the regiments of the guards on her horse, called Diamond.

'And this painting was not in good condition.

'So now when they begin to restore it they can now prove

'that it is done by the painter himself.

'So now we have the first portrait of Catherine of this style.'

Here comes another problem. It's my problem.

Now where to show it?

It's a very big portrait.

In the costume store, away from public view,

I found more evidence of Catherine's personality,

miraculously conserved for 250 years.

She was very strong and powerful.

It's the first impression of her costumes.

Throughout her 34-year reign,

Catherine looked towards Europe and used her incredible wealth and power

to civilise a previously barbaric Russia.

It's our outstanding costume of the Catherine the Great uniform dress.

It's dated nearly 1767.

The Hermitage owes most of its greatest pieces to Catherine,

whose passion was collecting.

Her ambitions knew no ends.

Russia has to come to the level of European countries.

Not only Army, not only Navy, culturally.

Everything should be on that level. And also collections.

Then it is... It should be endless and absolutely impressive.

She acquired three major collections en bloc, really.

1760s, she was able to buy the collection

of Count Bruhl in Dresden.

This painting, which is Titian's first masterpiece,

was acquired by Empress Catherine the Great.

This painting was described by Giorgio Vasari as one of the...

of Titian's first works in Venice.

And the acquisition of the collection of Crozat in 1771

was certainly one of the major things for the collection,

because it included also the first Raphael that came to Russia.

It was in itself something like 400 paintings.

She also picked up one of Rembrandt's greatest works.

And then 1779 - and it was very political also, the decision -

that she was buying the collection of Robert Walpole.

He was Prime Minster for England.

She was trying just to show Europe that Russian money is unlimited,

absolutely unlimited.

And Walpole's collection, it is 200 paintings nearly, 198.

And of the first quality.

It was not just the whim of a capricious woman.

It was always a serious matter for her.

For instance, she brought the Walpole Collection,

then Russia was in two wars,

one with the Swedes on the north and one with the Turks on the south.

Even at such a serious and difficult moment for the country

she was able to spend money for buying pictures.

So she understood very, very well, how it worked for her image.

And just imagine, then, these ships arriving here,

opposite to the palace,

and then unloading them.

And all these greats coming to this corridor

and simply filling the walls.

Catherine's legacy, to this day, inspires creativity.

It's a living museum, a place of scholarship.

I found artists working everywhere, learning from the great masters.

One of her most surprising acquisitions was a sculpture,

discovered completely by chance.

Catherine II made a very, very important acquisition.

She bought the collection of Marquis Lyde Browne in 1787.

This job lot of 250 classical sculptures from England

was discovered completely by chance on arrival in Russia

to contain a rare masterpiece -

this unfinished marble by Michelangelo.

Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage,

followed dynastically in his father's footsteps.

The first place I came was the Hermitage, when I begin to walk.

We lived nearby and my father worked in Hermitage all his life

so I was brought here.

When I was growing up...

As I was told, I should remember

that the first place I was brought was the arsenal.

So I was shown some drums and swords.

I didn't ever touch the swords - forbidden.

So I have this experience from my childhood, the museum experience

and the experience of archaeology and studying ancient history.

I have studied the profession from the beginning.

I was watching how my father was doing it.

He was a great person and certainly he was a great director.

In the middle of the 19th century,

these rooms have been rooms of,

let's say, the government,

because the State Council of Russia was situated here

and the place which is my office, the room which is my office,

was the Cabinet of Ministers of the Russian Empire.

Then they all moved to another, bigger building,

but we still feel that we are part

of the governing body of the Russian Empire.

The Hermitage was long ruled by imperial tsars.

Now the directors are state appointed.

I was taken to the real inner sanctum of the Hermitage.

The desk in Piotrovsky's office belonged to Tsar Alexander III,

but has since disappeared under piles of papers.

BUZZER

Piotrovsky speaks nine languages.

TRANSLATION:

'I must know how to do all the things which are done

'by all the different kinds of people in Hermitage,

'so I'm a co-ordinator, and the final...

'..well, place and person for arbitration.

'Final decision is mine.

'So it's very totalitarian,

but it's how it was always and should be.'

I was lead to a room in a far hidden corner of the museum,

away from the public eye.

I was told we'd find out all about

Catherine the Great's private obsession -

collecting engraved gemstones and cameos.

All preserved in their original 18th century Roentgen cabinets.

What we see now, we have the...

We can see how Catherine the Great was keeping her collections.

And definitely these are wonderful...

Well, it's not showcases, but they're wonderful pieces of art.

We try to keep it as it was in Catherine's time,

because she also had it in storage.

That's a way how you keep them.

So I'll show you how...

...it was and is.

This is unbelievable. And these cabinets were specially built by...

These cabinets had been specially built for Catherine.

And this tells you a bit about her, doesn't it? The kind of quantity.

Yes.

Quantity and quality,

because this is a very important part of Hermitage

and Catherine the Great's acquisitions.

It was always quality, which was very high.

They are a collection of the best names

but also the best things from the best names.

In a way, I think the passion which she had for art is a passion

which everybody must have that works in the museum.

It's a great delight to work with all the things.

To work in such surroundings.

That's why sometimes the government

thinks that they don't need to pay us money,

because we're enjoying our life being here.

Sometimes I think that her job and your job are very similar.

Er, well, partly. I am not running the country.

HE CHUCKLES

Although the Hermitage was created by Catherine the Great,

it was her predecessor, Peter the Great,

who also collected widely.

One of the quirkiest items I found in the Hermitage

is a waxwork of Peter, who was nearly seven feet tall...

..and actually a great hero who founded St Petersburg.

A small throne room was built in his memory,

which was under restoration.

He'd acquired from tomb robbers ancient Scythian gold

dating back to the 7th century BC,

which had been brought to southern Russia

by nomadic tribes from central Asia.

Siberia yielded yet more treasures.

And we will see the costume of Peter the Great.

He was very talented

and I'm proud of this fact that he chose the French fashion for Russia.

This uniform became the museum exhibit in 1732.

He collected a lot of items.

Sculptures, it was very new for Russia.

And his choice was really incredible.

I discovered that one of these very special exhibits

was acquired through a swap.

The most famous sculpture of the Hermitage

came under the reign of Peter The Great.

You can see it in this gallery and it came in 1719.

It was given to Peter The Great by Pope Clement the 11th

in exchange for relics of St Brigitta.

Imagine, it was covered by light, light colours, rouge lips,

black-blue eyes, gilded hair

and her charm and her power was very impressive,

even in antiquity,

and a lot of ancient writers left us a description of this statue.

'They say that a certain man was once overcome with love

'for the statue and that, after he had hidden himself

'in the shrine during the night-time,

'he embraced the statue and that it thus bears a stain,

'an indication of his lust.'

The swap turned out to be one-sided.

In the end, the Pope never got his relics.

One legacy built on another -

every ruler who was on the throne, found here in the Romanov Corridor,

added something to the Hermitage,

accumulating more and more treasures for the ever growing collection.

In the early 1800s,

Catherine the Great's grandson, Alexander I,

defeated Napoleon.

A portrait of all the generals who fought

appears in the 1812 Gallery.

He was also a collector.

First acquisition was certainly for sculpture from the collection

of Josephine Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon.

And the works of Canova are something sentimental.

Alexander also acquired great paintings from Paris.

Alexander's brother, Nicholas I, was to make a huge impact

on the architecture of the Hermitage,

by building a victory chariot,

and a column in memory of Russia's triumph over Napoleon.

He also added a museum wing to the Winter Palace.

This gallery was a part of the New Hermitage,

the first public museum constructed by Nicholas I.

The New Hermitage building... which is an impressive one

and I think quite unique in the world.

And every visitor, believe me, says "Wow!"

entering this interior.

The space is wonderful. It's a great example of

how the masterpiece of museum architecture has been done.

This is New Hermitage building by Leo von Klenze

which still is considered to be

one of the best museum buildings in the world.

And it is.

It's part of what Hermitage is.

We are keeping the memory of Russia and Russian Empire

and Russian history.

Not only by objects but with the buildings

and trying to remind people what our history is.

But in 1837, all the treasures were nearly lost forever,

in a big fire which burned for several days,

gutting the Winter Palace.

The art was saved by the guards and dumped in the snow.

Some gold ornaments were only found when the snow melted in the spring.

Within a year and a half,

the palace was completely rebuilt by Nicholas I,

and the art reinstalled.

In 1852, it was opened for public as the first public museum in Russia.

One of the most popular exhibits today

is the Madonna Litta by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Now when you come to the Hermitage,

you see there are crowds around Leonardo, endless crowds.

People that, when they come to the Hermitage,

they all need to see Da Vinci.

Second painting, Madonna Benois.

And it was one of the greatest lucks of the Hermitage,

that it was discovered in Saint Petersburg,

in the private family of Benois.

And then it was decided to buy it for the Hermitage.

Nicholas II, who had no artistic interest,

in this case he gave the money,

because for that time it was the highest price for the painting.

Highest price lasted until 1960s.

In the early 20th century, the Hermitage played centre stage

to the biggest upheaval in Russian history -

an era of massive social change.

There was huge dissent against the tsarist autocracy,

who ruled from the Winter Palace.

With the onset of the First World War,

St Petersburg was renamed Petrograd.

Parts of the Winter Palace changed their function

and became a hospital,

and later an orphanage.

By 1917, the museum's treasured collection was in jeopardy

and was packed up into crates for shipping to safety in Moscow,

out of the reach of the advancing German army.

When foreigners are near the Baltic, we have to evacuate collections.

It was in 1917, there was three trains.

Two managed to go out of Petrograd, went to Moscow,

and the third stopped because the October Revolution happened

and there was no way to get to Moscow.

It just came back.

It wasn't just the Germans that Tsar Nicholas II had to worry about.

Lenin's revolutionary Bolsheviks were uprising against him.

YELLING

The Revolution had a great impact on the Hermitage

and of course the Winter Palace as well,

which was residency of the Tsar's family.

Even though it wasn't as dramatic as in Eisenstein film.

Revolution is like a fire,

and so when the situation became difficult,

the director of Hermitage just closed the doors to the Winter Palace.

So when the Winter Palace was stormed, the Hermitage saved itself.

They didn't let anybody get in to the museum

and at certain moment they opened up the doors

to the members of Revolutionary Guard

who came just to protect the collection.

The clock in the White Dining Room stopped at ten past two,

the exact moment the Bolsheviks broke in

and arrested the provisional government

who were meeting around this table.

Only five days after the October Revolution,

Minister of Public Enlightenment issued a decree

ensuring that both Winter Palace and the State Hermitage

became the museums.

Nicholas II and his entire family were executed in Yekaterinburg,

marking the end of the Romanov dynasty.

Their portraits were slashed.

Petrograd was then renamed Leningrad

and the capital of Russia was moved to Moscow.

Incredibly, all the remaining contents of the Palace and Museum

came back to the Hermitage intact, now seen as property of the people.

There are two ways you can do something

against the previous regime.

Or you just destroy things, which mostly is done,

or you show things and say "Well, look how bad it is.

"Look how terrible it was to use money of the people

"to bring this." And so this second style is much better.

The effect of the Revolution meant the entire Palace was nationalized.

Every corner of the building became part of the Soviet State Museum.

Even the most unusual and private of places.

We are in the porcelain storage,

which used to be the former bathroom of two Russian Empresses.

And you can see here a lot of evidence

of how the bathroom looked like in their time.

One of these rooms were chosen to be

the storage of the Russian Imperial porcelain.

Within a few months after the porcelain factory

turned into the state porcelain factory,

they got a request from the government that the Soviet porcelain

should become a part of Lenin's plan of the monumental propaganda.

The new ideology, the new political and economical issues

of the newly-born country.

After the Revolution, traditional artists didn't immediately accept

the new Bolshevik power,

and it was left for avant-garde artists,

who offered their services to the new state.

Kazimir Malevich was the father of Suprematism.

In 1915, he exhibited his famous Black Square.

After the Revolution, Kazimir Malevich also felt

that he could produce art of the new Russia,

so they were hoping to impose their new art and new artistic forms

into the porcelain production.

But still Malevich wanted it to be unique,

rather than something that every worker will have in their house.

This movement was to inspire another Russian artist, Kandinsky,

to produce some of his greatest paintings.

The new Communist ideology stated that all property must be shared.

Many wealthy individuals were forced to flee the country

in fear of their lives

and leave behind their immense private collections of European art.

This was a period when the museum

acquired some of its most famous and valuable works.

One such collection came from the home

of wealthy Moscow merchant Sergei Schukin.

Of course he couldn't take with him something -

not any money, letters, documents, nothing.

His collection was nationalised.

Van Gogh, Cezanne

and then Matisse.

And then Picasso was the latest comer.

But in the '30s, this art, modern art was...

not greeted in the country.

The museum was now run by directors under government control.

This newly-acquired Western art was branded as decadent,

banned and not to be shown.

It's incredible to think that Picasso and Matisse were mothballed.

Instead, the Hermitage focused on its own ancient Russian history,

a period before the European-loving tsars.

So at that time archaeology became the main source of objects

and the main trend of scientific research in Hermitage,

so it is also a history of Hermitage.

And we have here several rooms,

which are dedicated to results of the work of Russian archaeologists.

The world's oldest carpet

was discovered in Siberia by Hermitage curators.

It was preserved in ice in the frozen tombs of Pazyryk,

dating back to 500 BC.

Here lies a tattooed Scythian warrior.

This really is Russia's own history.

Objects were reclassified according to their Communist value.

In the mid '20s, under Stalin's reign,

the Hermitage suffered catastrophic losses

to its collection of European art.

To raise money for tractors and machine tools,

Russia sold off many of Catherine's precious old masters to America,

bought by wealthy financier Andrew Mellon,

who founded the National Gallery Of Art, in Washington DC.

There were more works offered than the 21 he acquired.

They were great Old Masters

that the Russian government decided to sell

to raise cash at the time.

You know in 1911, there was a guide book

published by Alexandre Benois, a Russian historian of art

and, erm, sometimes it seems to me,

when I just turn the pages of this guidebook

and see the reproductions there,

the images, they showed...

They just took this book into their hands,

you know, and just put the finger, I want this,

want this and this,

because you can see that all these masterpieces,

a lot of them are reproduced in this book.

Well, the collection also houses

probably some of the greatest Italian Renaissance masters

in the entire world.

The Raphael Alba Madonna,

the great tondo, it's an extraordinary painting.

This really is pretty exciting,

to go through this museum and say,

"Oh, wow, that's a fabulous painting."

It turns out, "Oh, that was Andrew Mellon?

"Oh, my gosh, it came from the Hermitage."

Well, it was an extraordinary coup, no question about it.

I think he paid something north of $6,600,000,

at the time, for them.

Can't imagine.

It was quite an extraordinary thing, historically.

Still is for that matter.

It was a national tragedy because defence was difficult because,

well, politically, no real possibility of saying no

was existing in the '30s.

A letter was sent to Stalin by future museum director Josif Orbeli,

begging him to halt the sell-off.

But the purge didn't stop at art.

The Hermitage staff were now under threat.

Seen as enemies of the state,

they were prosecuted under trumped-up charges.

Over 50 were exiled to the Gulag prison camps.

Many people from the Hermitage spent time in Gulag.

People were sent because of their being a member of a noble family,

being the son or the daughter of an officer of Tsar army.

My grandfather, Nikolai Bauer,

had worked in the Hermitage more than 25 years

and he was arrested

and in September executed.

During the Reign of Terror, at least 12 curators never returned.

To this day, people don't want to talk about the purge.

And do you know why they were sent away?

I don't know why they were sent away. Don't know.

My father was in prison for short time, half a year, but this was...

It was beginning, they got... Then he was freed and he, I think,

was using that decision... He's not,

hasn't done anything wrong in the next years which came.

AUDIO FROM A SPEECH BY HITLER

In World War II, Hitler had the Hermitage in his sights.

The Nazis weren't just killing people, they were looting the art,

systematically plundering across Europe for the Fuhrer's own museum.

There was the question of being robbed and everything taken out

so when Germans began to come in close to St Petersburg,

Hermitage was prepared for evacuation.

It was Orbeli's decision.

They began to prepare collections for evacuation to Urals.

Three trains had been prepared. Two managed to leave Leningrad.

The third had to go back because the Siege was closed.

The same thing happened in 1917.

They were put into crates

and then evacuated to Ural Mountains, as all other things.

So just frames were on the walls.

TRAIN WHISTLE

SIRENS

With most of the collection safe,

the curators and their families sheltered in the cellars

underneath the Winter Palace.

The Germans bombed all the food stores

and it was extraordinary,

kind of the smell of burning sugar was absolutely hanging,

hanging over Leningrad.

You smell it everywhere and so on.

No food anymore, kind of, bombs started coming the whole time

and then the Germans surrounded.

Didn't your father come here as the fire warden?

Yes, definitely.

Well, my father, the fire warden, they had them mostly at nights,

so they had been going through these rooms at night, during the war,

and we have a picture, one of the pictures,

which is so dark, dark, dark.

It's exactly of this room, during the night, at night during the war.

Everything was concentrated on what to eat next

and all kind of things appeared.

First of all belts,

which my father kind of had a lot at home.

So these belts were slowly cooked till they were quite soft

and they were quite delicious.

Then... SHE LAUGHS

..my grandmother, first of all she had a cat,

then my mother said, "Well, you must decide who is more precious to you,

"your cat or your granddaughter,"

So she cried and gave us her cat.

Cats are delicious, absolutely delicious.

Soldiers who came from the front,

who were hungry, who were tired of battles and all those things,

one of the guides made an excursion around the Hermitage

and he showed just empty frames but talked about the paintings.

He described them and people were standing and listening

and everybody was happy to listen,

even when they couldn't see the paintings.

A third of the population of Leningrad died in the Siege,

including over 100 of the Hermitage staff.

The first exhibition was opened at once, shortly after the victory,

and after, step by step, galleries have been opened

and these sculptures occupy their places.

During the war, the idea of compensation, restitution arised,

in all the countries fighting Germany,

but certainly, especially in Russia,

because a lot of Russian heritage was stolen, was taken by Germans.

Then there was a decision that when we win and come to Germany,

first of all we'll take our collections back

and then we'll take some of them as compensation

for what is done to our countries.

So we do have some of the paintings and some archaeological material.

Piotrovsky took me to the museum storage facility centre

on the other side of St Petersburg,

where I discovered these frescos liberated from Germany

and kept by Russia since the '40s.

For years, the hidden treasures seized from Germany

were kept in closed storage.

Because they wanted them returned,

it was too controversial to exhibit them.

However, the Russian parliament decreed a law

saying that all art should stay where it was.

In 1995, there was a permission to show those paintings.

That's how they're here.

My opinion is that whatever was taken during the war,

or whatever it is, it's all right,

but it should be shown to the public.

It shouldn't be kept hidden away for years and years and years.

That's my opinion, but that's just my opinion.

The sin is not to show art. You have to show art.

If you have something, you must show it

and then discuss to whom it does belong.

It's maybe still our socialist upbringing and education,

it's important. Art is more important than property and money.

I'm afraid not everybody thinks this way,

but still it's what we try to teach at Hermitage.

The death of Stalin in 1953 saw in a new era for the Hermitage.

The extraordinary collection of post-impressionist paintings

seized from Schukin and other exiles,

which had been kept locked away, could at last be shown.

The people around Stalin, and Stalin himself, they hated such art.

Only from '56, we started here to show impressionists,

then Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso,

and now every important painting by such artists is on view.

The government brought many foreign dignitaries to the Hermitage,

but the then-director, Mikhail Artamonov,

found himself fighting a constant battle

to keep hold of the museum's treasures.

Government always wanted the Hermitage

to give up some of its things so that it could be used as gifts

to foreign delegations or things like that, and he refused to do it.

The director of Hermitage was sacked.

Many directors of Hermitage have been sacked because Hermitage,

it's a very special institution.

It's very important, and in the '60s,

this was the period where my father came.

In 1964, another archaeologist, Piotrovsky's father Boris,

was made director of the Hermitage.

It was a hub for academic study, but due to the Cold War

virtually no tourists came

and there was little money to keep the museum running.

Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky succeeded his father

becoming director in 1992.

I have grown up in Hermitage so I think it's very natural that

when Hermitage needed some special treatment,

a person who has grown up in Hermitage,

but wasn't working in Hermitage,

was somehow chosen.

Russia's Perestroika saw the collapse of the Soviet Union

and the end of the Cold War.

Leningrad was renamed St Petersburg.

But the new Russia had no money for art.

So we learned from our colleagues in Europe and America,

who live in the jungle of market economy,

how you do behave in this situation.

So we managed. We managed to count the money.

We managed to work with small amounts of money

for construction and for acquisition.

We managed to bring together Friends of Hermitage,

to get money from the government.

And when you walk through the museum,

you see all the small challenges

which are as important as the big ones.

These days, Piotrovsky's role as museum director

is as much political as it is cultural.

Putin as a ruler, it's very much in Russian tradition,

and he has made a lot of important decisions

in helping development of the museum.

He is a cultural person who has the right feeling of Hermitage.

He was the first who began,

not only to send his guests to Hermitage,

he began to come with his guests to Hermitage.

For us, for Russia, it's a rare thing.

I think it's also rare for other countries, let's say.

Nowadays, Hermitage art travels widely.

70 paintings were lent to Houghton Hall in England,

to recreate Sir Robert Walpole's art collection,

bought by Catherine the Great.

All you see here is of the time, so nothing has changed.

Everything has been returned to its original position,

so on either side, sort of in prime position,

you have those two very great portraits by Van Dyke

which are in the Hermitage,

and those are among the best portraits by Van Dyke in any museum.

So what we have tried to do here

is to recreate the collection as it was.

In other words, to re-hang the pictures

how the pictures were displayed in the 18th century.

It's a once in a lifetime exhibition

and certainly is a legacy for the house,

and I think for our two countries' relationship I think it's very...

After all, the arts is a way of bridging...

making bridges between countries.

And you couldn't get a better example of that,

and at this time, than this exhibition.

Piotrovsky has been a globe-trotter,

sort of exploring the collections of the world.

He's taken the museum from one century to the next,

from one world to the next as well.

It's quite a difficult transition, from Soviet times

to contemporary times.

Antony Gormley's exhibition brought a new direction for the Hermitage.

What is important for us is to show the museum is a vivid organism.

That it's not an old dusty archive,

but is something that is living.

And the contemporary sculptures,

as well as old sculptures,

are on the same level of art history.

So by introducing some new works we also point to the old works,

and people who come to see something new,

they rediscover the old ones.

Of the 27 works in the original Dionysus Room,

I retained five.

So all of them were taken off their plinths,

placed directly on the ground.

That basically allowed you to stand on the same level

as the sculpted mythical figures

of Venus, Athena, Eros and others.

And that was my concept for, in a way,

re-booting the power of these ancient works.

The idea was that in one room we have only Greek sculptures

and in another room we have only Antony's work

and through the doorway it was a dialogue in between them.

It was a difficult project.

And like a shock

when these iron, ugly from our point of view, statues,

have been on display in that gallery!

But everybody was amused, everybody,

because they were friendly.

And we can see, as visitors tried to imitate the poses,

like this, like this,

and so on.

Other contemporary artists are working in unseen places,

like underneath the Winter Palace

where cats have traditionally lived since it was built 250 years ago.

I see the cats as a sub-culture.

OK. So they are my friends

and they are my community and I talk with, you know.

I will make a kind of installation with wood and carpet

and also like... Like, you know, with this round wood

where the cats climb and stuff,

so a kind of cat place but then for humans.

Now in the 21st century, the Hermitage has expanded its galleries

across the square into the General Staff Building,

where paintings by Monet and Matisse stand alongside Malevich.

An ant hill of around three million visitors

has replaced the royal court

for which the palace was originally designed

and moving them around is today's architectural challenge.

There is a kind of experience of getting

the masses through the former spaces of rulers.

Therefore, it is inevitably not a kind of rare experience anymore,

but a kind of common experience

and so we are trying to enrich the experience of being there.

All the objects that simply don't fit in the museum

are in the storage facility.

The entire contents of the Winter Palace are displayed here

in over 1km of glass corridor.

The beauty of the Hermitage is that it's a museum, not about collecting,

or about selection, but about accumulation.

It's not just about art - it's about identity.

I think the Hermitage is unique

because you feel like you're visiting a place

in which history really did change.

This is a tectonic plate in the story of human culture.

And this makes it not just a gallery of art,

but also the historical place, very important for Russian people.

By exploring the Hermitage,

I've discovered why we collect and keep things -

to learn about ourselves and our past.

The Hermitage is a place of cultural history -

palace and museum together.

After war, revolution and austerity,

the art has survived to tell the tale.