The Winter Palace Theater

The Winter Palace Theater is part of the Hermitage Museum built by Catherine the Great. The Hermitage's collections are displayed in adjoining buildings along the Neva embankment, which form an enormous museum complex: the Winter Palace, the Small Hermitage, the Old Hermitage and lastly the New Hermitage. The Hermitage Theater, the private theater of the Tsars, is a beautifully decorated amphitheater and still hosts regular lectures, concerts, opera and ballet performances. It is said that to view everything in the museum would take 11 years.

The theater fell into disrepair during the Bolshevik Revolution until it was restored by the Hermitage Ballet Company after the fall of communism. It has always featured the soloists of the Mariinski (Kirov) Theater, the Bolshoi in Moscow, and the Mussorgsky Theater of St. Petersburg.