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The Hermitage in Sankt Petersburg, one of the world’s outstanding museums, has been collecting treasures of culture and art of various civilizations, peoples and countries for two and a half centuries.

The Museum was founded in 1764. In it’s first decade, the Hermitage had already impressed its visitors with it’s splendour and wealth. In the late eighteenth century a new building was constructed by Vallin de La Mothe, the Small Hermitage, to accommodate it’s growing collection. The building consisted of two pavilions, the southern one and the northern one. The northern pavilion was meant to be a place of solitude and it’s walls were hung with pictures.

‘The Hermitage’ was the name Catherine the Great gave the whole collection of paintings, antiquities, porcelain and cut gems housed in various parts of the building and the buildings attached to it. The Museum has retained this name to the present day. As the collection grew, it needed bigger space, so architect Yuri Velten erected a new building next to the Small Hermitage, the Old Hermitage. In 1812 the war with France disrupted the regular course of life at the Hermitage. Upon the invasion of Russia by Napoleon’s army, the Museum’s priceless treasures were ordered on a ‘secret expedition’. The only mention of their evacuation and subsequent return in 1813 was in court records.

To commemorate the victory in the Great Patriotic War a special gallery was designed by the architect Carlo Rossi for portraits of Russian generals, analogous to the Windsor Castle gallery. The English painter George Dawe, with the assistance of Russian artists Wilhelm Golicke and Alexander Poliakov, painted 329 portraits of this gallery.During it’s restoration afted the fire from 1837 it became obvious that the collection needed more space, so a new building, the New Hermitage was designed by Leo von Klenze.

The Hermitage took the character of a museum institution after the October Revolution of 1917, when the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree regarding the protection of art and antique relics. The Hermitage’s developing and diversifying activities were interrupted by World War II, when its collections were evacuated far away to the Urals. The museum personnel who accompanied the collections to the hinterland continued their work there, while those who stayed in Sankt Petersburg during the siege strove to keep the museum buildings safe. Only in October 1945 was it possible to return the evacuated treasures to their home in the Hermitage and begin reconstruction and expansion of the exhibitions.

Today, the Hermitage collections consist of more than three million pieces which are exhibited in 365 rooms occupying five buildings. It has hosted exhibits from European countries, Asia and America, strengthening cultural and scientific bounds between nations.

Folk back home aren’t best pleased. Although the President is permitted to spend his own money in whichever way he wishes, it’s really a bit of a slap in the teeth for his countrymen back home in Cameroon where the average annual income is around $1,000.

Above: the extravagant president and his wife at a fancy hat contest with some friends.

It’s easy to criticise, especially when you don’t have access to that kind of cash that would lift you out of poverty along with the rest of your village, but isn’t it so typical of people who get into power and then won’t leave? He’s been president since 1982, and if a British Prime Minister was to flaunt wealth in that way, especially during a recession there would be questions asked.