View larger image 
 previous room | next room |
| | By the time the New Hermitage opened, the palace numismatic collection, established at the same time as the Picture Gallery and the collection of antiquities, already had almost a century of history behind it. At first it was proposed to arrange the numismatic collection in a similar way to that in Vienna "the greater part of which is placed in pull-out drawers, while only a selection of the most attractive and most rare items are displayed under glass," but Nicholas I gave orders for the whole collection to be put on public show. The pull-out drawers provided in the body of each display-case were set aside for the storage of duplicates. Since numismatic material is not easy to view, Klenze devoted great attention to the rich and splendid decoration of the twelve-column hall with its two rows of windows, loggias and upper gallery. The mahogany display-cases adorned with allegorical gilded bronze figures contained the ancient and Russian numismatic collections. |
