The research and culture centre “Hermitage-Italy” was established in 2007 in Ferrara with the aim of performing joint research work focusing on collections of Italian art and Russian-Italian relations. In 2013 the Hermitage-Italy Centre moved to Venice; since that time it has been housed in the building of the Procuratie Vecchie, the old procuracies, on St. Mark's Square.
Today the principal tasks of the centre include promoting research work with the aim of detailed cataloguing of the Hermitage collections of Italian art; establishing a documentation centre on history of Italian art collecting with regard to the Hermitage collection; organising conferences and seminars on the corresponding themes as well as internships and fellowships for professional development of the employees working at the Hermitage, other Russian museums, and cultural institutions of Italy and Europe.
In the recent years, the centre has organised over a hundred internships. On their basis several academic conferences were held, with conference proceedings published or being prepared for publication. The centre has published three catalogues of the Hermitage's Italian collections in the Italian language and took part in the preparation of about ten Hermitage's exhibitions in Italy, including the exhibitions of Leonardesques in Pavia in 2011 and of the Basilewski Collection in Turin in 2013. The centre organised the display in the Hermitage of such masterpieces as Giorgione’s “The Tempest” from the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Giotto’s “God the Father” from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and Antonello da Messina’s “Portrait of a Man” from the Turin City Museum of Ancient Art. The exhibition titled “Nineteenth-Century Italian Painting. From Neoclassicism to Symbolism” was one of the most visited exhibitions in the world in 2012. The exhibition “From Guercino to Caravaggio” organised with the support of the Sir Denis Mahon Charitable Trust was also a great success and became one of the most visited exhibitions in 2013.