The Hermitage opened its doors for the young Petersburgers. 4 October 2008, the Hermitage Theatre hosted the traditional annual event, Student Day. Every year the Youth Centre of the museum holds a Student Day and opens a new season at the first weekend of October.

In 1999, at the turn of the two millenniums, when the General Staff building became a part of the museum complex, a special sector responsible for organising educational and cultural programmes for students from St. Petersburg and other cities and towns in Russia as well as from abroad was established in the Hermitage. Young people found their niche in the Hermitage. Studies, lectures, seminars and educational programs are combined with festive events and meetings in a friendly atmosphere.

Every year officers of the museum prepare a special programme for St. Petersburg students within the frames of Student Day. The history of this festival comprises meetings, concerts and tours to new exhibitions. Students visited closed rooms of the General Staff building, the roof and the attics of the Winter Palace. As this year the Hermitage celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Boris Piotrovsky, a well-known archaeologist, a foremost specialist in the history and archeology of the Ancient East and the Caucasus, the Student Day celebrations has been devoted to him.

Boris Piotrovsky dedicated many years of his life to the Hermitage, the treasury of the Russian art. One-third of his life he spent as the head of the largest museum in Russia; for 26 years he worked as a Director of the museum combining scientific effort with the job of the Director of the worldwide famous museum. Mikhail Piotrovsky, the son of Boris Piotrovsky, also being a Director of the Hermitage, told many interesting things about the life of his father.

The hard-driving programme consisted of a documental film about the Hermitage Director, traditional presentation of the Hermitage Student Club sections and a surprise in the form of the programme "The Hermitage of Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky". The students visited the halls that had been of great importance for the scientist. On the October Staircase there was a meeting with the nephew of Boris Piotrovsky, Deputy Head of the Department of Archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia, Yury Piotrovsky. At the end of the evening there were demonstrations of renewed expositions in the Caucasus Halls and a concert of the State Hermitage Orchestra soloists.

The event gathered about 300 cheerful and energetic young people interested in history and art. During the next week, from the 5th till the 12th of October, they can join sections of the Student Club in the Youth Centre.

At the expositions in the Caucasus Halls

Meeting with Yury Piotrovsky

Speech of the State Hermitage Director, Mikhail Piotrovsky

Speech of the Head of the Youth Educational Centre Svetlana Kudryavtseva

Documental film about Boris Piotrovsky - the State Hermitage Director in 1964-1990

Natalia Makho, Curator of the section "Painting genres"

Mikhail Balan, Curator of the section "French Club"

Students in the Hermitage Theatre

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