Museum of the Guards Opening

On 9 December, 2003, the Feast of St George, was opened Russia's first Museum of the Guards. The decision was taken in 2000, when the Winter Palace's Antechamber and Nicholas and Concert Halls hosted an exhibition celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Russian Imperial Guards organized by the Hermitage jointly with other museums of St. Petersburg and its suburbs.

Accommodated in the General Staff's interiors, restored specially for the occasion, the Museum of the Guards displays about 200 objects, including uniforms, weaponry, banners, regiment regalia, paintings, drawings, applied art, coins and documents, which trace the brilliant and dramatic history of the Russian Imperial Guards from the age of Alexander I to the Guards' departure for the battlefields of the 1st World War under Nicholas II.

One of the Museum's halls accommodates priceless relics, preserved abroad and brought back to Russia after many decades. Descendants of the Preobrazhensky Regiment's soldiers gave the Hermitage a portrait of Peter I. M.G. Yelachich arranged for the repatriation of two standards of the Life Guards' Preobrazhensky Regiment dating from the 18th century; one of them was received in gift, the other purchased with the support of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Princes N.R. Romanov and D.R. Romanov handed over the personal standard of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich the Elder. The standard of His Majesty's Life Guards' Lancer Regiment was presented by Boris Jordan and Yelena Bogolyubova, the heirs of its custodians. From O.B. Levshina, the new museum received the archive of Her Majesty's Life Guards' Cuirassier Regiment. The St George Banner of the Life Guards' Grenadier Regiment found its way back to St. Petersburg from London, after Russian President Vladimir Putin received it in the United Kingdom on his state visit.

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At the opening of the exhibition

First visitors