From 2 to 5 October 2006 the State Hermitage was the venue for a scholarly conference marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding expert on Byzantium, director of the sector on Byzantium and the Near East within the Oriental Department, holder of a doctorate in history, Alisa Vladimirovna Bank (1906 1984).

Among those taking part in the conference were not only Hermitage employees, doctor Bank's colleagues and students, but also medievalists from St Petersburg, Moscow and Yekaterinburg: the State Russian Museum, the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg and Moscow), St Petersburg University, Moscow State University, the Russian National Library, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg and Moscow), the scholarly society of Vizantinorossica , the Institute of the History of the Arts under the Ministry of Culture (Moscow), the Museum of the Art of Peoples of the Orient (Moscow), the Russian State Humanities University (Moscow), the State Museums of the Moscow Kremlin, the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Urals State University, as well as institutions from the Ukraine - the Bogdan and Barbara Khanenko Museum of Western and Oriental Art (Kiev), the Crimean Branch of the Ukrainian Institute of Archeology (Simferopol), the Ukrainian Institute of Oriental Studies (Simferopol) and the Kherson Historical-Architectural Museum-Preserve (Sevastopol).

Some 34 reports were delivered at the conference, covering a great variety of topics - from artistic and iconographic analysis of monuments of Byzantine and Ancient Russian painting and applied art to source analysis and historiographic studies and liturgical issues. Special interest was elicited by reports from Crimean archeologists devoted to new discoveries of Byzantine frescoes in cave churches of the Southwestern (report of E.E. Chueva and E.A. Bobrovsky) and the Southeastern Crimea (report of E.A. Zinko).

According to the conference agenda, a session of the Russian Palestine Society was held in the Hermitage Theatre on 3 October. This was opened by State Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky. Reports dealing with Eastern Christianity were delivered - on pilgrims from Central Asia in the Near East, on Nestorian and Coptic monuments, on the icon of St. Ubrus in Medieval Russia. Participants of the conference received information about an international symposium which took place in Jerusalem under the direction of the Orthodox Palestine Society - Jerusalem in the Russian Spiritual Tradition.

Resumes of the conference reports have been published. All participants received a collection of articles entitled The Byzantine Idea. Byzantium in the Age of the Comneni and Paleologi prepared by Byzantine scholars from the Hermitage for the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies which took place in London from 21 to 26 August 2006. The Hermitage arranged for conference participants to visit to the new storage facility in Staraya Derevnya, as well as the Konstantinovsky Palace, where they could see the exhibition the museum organized for the G-8 Summit. On 6 October there was a day trip to the Tikhvin Monastery.

Georgi Vilinbakhov, Deputy director of the State Hermitage Museum at the conference