A Winter Evening in the Winter Palace

On 8 February 2011 the Youth Educational Center of the State Hermitage Museum invited the best students of the Students Club "Hermitage" to a Winter Evening in the Winter Palace. It is a traditional February event to open a new academic term held in the museum after it is closed for visitors. The main objective of this event is to show an absolutely different Hermitage - strict and solemn - rather than commonly busy with tourist groups and the hubbub of visitors.

The evening was opened by the director of the Youth Educational Center Sophia Vladimirovna Kudryavtseva. The event included a visit to the evening Hermitage, performance by the soloists of the State Hermitage Orchestra in the palace’s state rooms.

The imperial residence - the Winter Palace - appeared to the students in all its glory and magnificence receiving them as the honoured guests. The Jourdan Staircase, the shining state rooms, mysterious passages and chamber living quarters... Unusual was the look of the romms of the French art of the XVII-XVIII centuries in tender evening light. Picturesque paintings and sculptures, furniture and china looked as if they dived into the twilight; only shadows cast by the lamps played on the walls and dome. There was a surprise in store for students - the entrancing sound of a harp was heard from the White Hall.

The evening was concluded with a meeting with the head of the Laboratory for Scientific Restoration of Textile Marina Vladimirovna Denisova who told about a unique project of restoration of the beaded pictures from the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum accomplished in the Hermitage and now represented in one of the Winter Palace halls.

Director of the Youth Educational Center S. Kudryavtseva

In the Winter Hall of the Winter Palace

Meeting with the head of the Laboratory for Scientific Restoration of Textile M. Denisova