Rooms and Halls

Reopening of the rooms of the culture and art of the Caucasus after restoration
On 7 December 2006, part of the permanent display of the culture and art of the Caucasus was opened after restoration - four rooms presenting works of the culture and art of the Caucasus from the late 2nd and early 1st millennium B.C. (Room 55), the ancient state of Urartu that existed in the 9th-7th centuries BC in the area of Lakes Van, Urmia and Sevan (Room 56) and ancient and mediaeval Armenia and Georgia (Rooms 62-63).
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Restoration of the floors of the Hermitage
The famous artistically patterned parquet floors of the State Hermitage, created to designs by prominent 19th century architects, have now reached a considerable age.Time, heavy wear and the poor state of the underlying sub-floors have led to destruction of the parquet. Complete protection is not provided even by modern "water-based" wear-resistant coatings that are used in the rooms by a special museum service. Consequently the "Hermitage Floors" programme was instituted for the restoration of the parquet floors of the museum.
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The reopening after reconstruction of the Antechamber in the Western Apartment of the Menshikov Palace
June 2006 saw the reopening after reconstruction of the "Antechamber" architectural and decorative ensemble in the Menshikov Palace, in the former reception room of Darya Menshikova, the wife of St Petersburg's first governor. (The work was carried out by the Art Expert scientific restoration company.)
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The Department of the Archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia in the Staraya Derevnia Resoration and Storage Centre
The Hermitage "trophy collections" are gradually being transferred to specially equipped rooms in the Staraya Derevnia Repositiory. These are collections of organic materials (wooden items from the Pazyryk burial mounds, the Minusinsk Depression and Russian Turkistan) and also the Neolithic collections of North-Western Russia from excavations carried out by the State Hermitage's North-Western Archaeological Expedition and collections from new acquisitions (the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for the History of Material Culture, graves of Scythian and Hunno-Sarmatian times excavated by Anatoly. Mandelstam and Elvira Stambulnik).
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