100 000th Visitor in the Hermitage • Amsterdam Centre

A month after the official opening of the exhibition centre Hermitage • Amsterdam and the Russian Imperial Court exhibition, July 20, 2009, the centre welcomed its 100 000th visitor. The interest towards the new exhibition centre and the exhibition devoted to ceremonies and festivals celebrated by the Russian court is really enormous. The queue to the Hermitage • Amsterdam centre can be compared to the queue to the Hermitage itself in the summer season. The municipality of Amsterdam has received complaints stating that the visitors refuse to leave the opening bridge leading to the building of the exhibition centre during the opening procedure, afraid that they can lose their place in the queue.

At the website of the Hermitage • Amsterdam centre there is a lot of interesting feed-back from the visitors. One of the citizens of Amsterdam, who is interested in the Russian history, has visited the exhibitions eleven times during this month! Another visitor writes that he spent about six (!) hours at the Russian Imperial Court exhibition and managed to see just one section of the exhibition devoted to the court ceremonies. He will definitely come back to the exhibition soon to enjoy the atmosphere of court festivities created in the exhibition wing devoted to the ball theme. All the visitors agree that the choice of the topic for the opening exhibition of the Hermitage • Amsterdam centre was absolutely right.

“It is almost impossible to believe in this success. The number of visitors during such a short period is beyond all our expectations", says Ernst Veen, director of the Hermitage • Amsterdam centre.

Within the frames of the Russian Imperial Court exhibition a large cultural programme has been organized: lectures, concerts, films based on Russian literary masterpieces shown in the open air. At the end of August the Hermitage • Amsterdam centre will host one of the most famous musical festivals in the Netherlands, the Canal Festival. This year the programme of the festival is devoted to Russian classical music.

The Russian Imperial Court exhibition in the Hermitage • Amsterdam centre is opened until January 31, 2010.