Gold room at the Hermitage

[stipmom]

What exactly do you see in this room. We are a family of 5 so it will be $75.00 extra . Is it worth it? Thanks

[gdayhoff]

It's a toss up.With the two of us it was at $30.00 a treat and worth it.At $75.00 i think I would pass.So much to see in St Petersburg.
Enjoy.

[AZ Boomer]

Are there any other opinions out there on the Gold Room?

[aqua]

We are not going because we would rather spend our time seeing the rest of the museum. My daughter loves the Impresssionists, and is anxious to see the collection. We have such a small amount of time in St. Petersburg that we have to pick and choose carefully. I know that the Hermitage is huge, so we will only skim the surface in the 2 hours we are there. However, I know that many people have enjoyed the Gold Room. We seriously considered doing it, but decided to concentrate on our personal interests. So much to see, so little time!

[Jane110]

Could someone who's been there explain in just a little bit of depth what exactly is in the Gold Room. All I've heard people say is "gold".

Can anyone elaborate a bit?

Thanks.

[KathyMG]

It's my understanding that the Gold Rooms house the precious jewels. I think they also call them the Treasury rooms. The Hermitage has a website, [url="http://www.hermitagemuseum.org,"]www.hermitagemuseum.org,[/url] which explains their exhibits. You might want to check there. We are adding the Gold Rooms for an additional $15 per person with Red October.

Kathy

[reinsl]

We just returned from the Grand Princess (May 19 - 29) and paid the extra to see the Gold room with RO. We felt it was worth it. It was amazing to see gold items created in 300 to 500 BC in excellent condition. We were told that some of these items could not be reproduced today. It is a smaller area so large tours would have a problem.

[nny92825100]

We were just on the Jewel May 16-28 and seen the gold room. There are few precious jewels on a few swords and daggers. A good portion of the gold items are from early BC which can not be reproduced today. These include intricte broches, torques, head gear and bracelets. Small groups go through and need a translater as the leader only speaks Russian. I do not think children will enjoy this as you must be quiet so as not to disturb the other people. I think it took about 30 minutes to go through, however you do get rushed through so I felt I did miss a lot. They have magnifying glasses so you can see the detail on some of the items. I thought it was worth it, however, my teen was bored.

Jewel of the Sea May 2004
Serenade of the Sea August 2003
Splendour of the Sea August 1999
Legend of the Sea August 1997
Rotterdam May 1989

[lysolqn]

We just returned from the Constellation May 22/June 5 cruise and visited the Gold Room at the Hermitage with Red October.
The Gold Room is actually two small rooms which contain jewelry (some pieces date back to biblical times) and other jeweled items including swords and ceremonial garb, in addition to personal items once owned by Russian aristocracy.
While the Gold Room is interesting to visit and some of the pieces exceptional in their intricate design and exhorbitant worth, I've yet to figure out why there is an additional charge to view these rooms. I tend to think it's simply a marketing ploy to increase revenue.
It was just two of us, so the $30 additional charge wasn't a big deal. After all, how often do you get to visit the Hermitage? In all honesty though, I'd think twice about spending $75 additional for a family of five.

[linh123]

We just returned from the May 22nd sailing on the Constellation. We included the Gold Room in the Hermitage tour, but I would not spend $75.00 additional to see it. I don't think it is worth that much extra money.

[Mrs Seabird]

It was interesting but not worth $75 IMO.

[mek]

Lots of things made from gold, Faberge' items, and the famous gold mirror used by every Grand Dutchess,(about to be Empress) before their weddings that by itself, was worth the price of admission to me.

[peggyann]

Just returned fromBaltic on Regatta. Gold room is as others have described. Given another opportunity I think that I would opt to spend more time with the paintings, particularly the European masters like Rembrandt. Woud loved to have spent more time viewing the art works, having just visited the Rembrandt house in Amsterdam. I would skip the Gold Room. Enjoy the Hermitage!

[Kemmie67]

We just returned from a Holland America Baltic cruise on the Westerdam. (June 24-July 6, 2004) In St. Petersburg, we chose not to get a Russian visa, so used the ship's excursions which were covered by a group visa. Had an early tour of the Hermitage and a special tour of the Gold Room. Even before the museum opened to the public, it was clogged with all the tourists from many ocean and river cruise ships. The only place we had to ourselves was our time in the Gold Room. We thought the exhibits were spectacular--especially the gold work done by early people living north of the Baltic Sea. Their skill in working gold cannot be duplicated today--as the guide said "How did they manage to work gold into such fine mesh--without magnifying glass?" Today, you can only see the details of the mesh through the magnifiers provided at the display. We had ample time to inspect the exhibits up close. Our guide spoke excellent English and added to the visit.

The Hermitage was of course spectacular, but on closer examination, it was disappointing to see how their priceless art collection is being treated. NO climate control, terrible lighting on the paintings, and many looked like they needed a good cleaning. The rooms have certainly been beautifully restored, gorgeous gilding, detail work, etc. but if they don't spend more of our tourist dollars on better care of their paintings, they will certainly deteriorate.

Within the past two years I've visited the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Alte Pinothek museum in Munich and our local art museum in Portland, Oregon. All of these are doing a far better job of displaying their paintings and caring for them. Very sad that Russia cannot yet match the other museums. My impression: the Hermitage has a great quantity of art, but frankly, not the overall quality of the other museums.

The enormous crowds in the Hermitage really affected our enjoyment of the museum. It was all we could do to keep track of our guide among the hundreds, all speaking at once. Talk about Babel! Most museums today require visitors to use some sort of private listening device. We saw a few people using those in the Hermitage, but by far, most people were straining to hear what their guide was saying among all the other chatter. The chances of having even a few moments to enjoy their major artists was close to nil.

I was probably most impressed by the enormous vases and pillars made of malachite and lapis lazuli mosaic. They are amazing.

The best thing about the Hermitage is their wonderful website. If you want to see many of their master works--look at [url="http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/"][color=#0000ff]www.hermitagemuseum.org[/color][/url].

[nny92825100]

Thank you for the link. It reminded me of how much we missed. The three hours the tours give you is not enough. My cousin went to a Rotary convention in St. Petersburg in April and visited the Hermitage every day for 5 days and still missed a lot. We did a lot of comparing of notes and we sure seen different things. She went on her own and had no guide so she did not get the historical info. She did not get those little private listening devises that are so common everywhere else.

I liked the gold room, especially the intricate work that can not be reproduced nowdays. My son who was 16 was a little bored and my husband would have liked to spend more time in the museum looking at everything. Each to their own. I agree it is so crowded in all the places we went, even the fountains at Peterhoff. We had only 7 in our tour group and had a hard time hearing what our guide had to say, sometimes even following him. Paying to go in early is almost a waste as all the tours "pay to get in early" and it is still crowded. I had heard that there were over 20000 people in St. Petersburg by tourist ship, boat or ferry when we were there in May. I imagine full summer would be higher. Just about all want to get in the museum early and all do pay the extra. That does not count all the other travelers who are visiting. I think you can get the picture of how crowded it can be.

[2ifbysea]

Have read that it takes 10 to enter the Gold Room (at least for the $15 surcharge). Is this the case or can it be done with a smaller group?

[shoshona2]

When we were there last year, we had six in our group. Red October combined us with another of their tour groups making us a group of 11. If you are booked with Red October or another group, they will probably do the same thing. They only allow a certain amount of people in at one time. I think we were in there for 40 minutes.

[mphill1022]

it is not widely known that there are 2 different gold rooms--- the one we saw had ancient relics but no royal jewels etc---- after we visited and asked--- they told us there was a second gold room that had more modern jewels; crowns etc. ( you get to see one not two for the 15 price)
the room we saw was nice --- was it worth 15 a person--- maybe---
by the way, the royal jewels at the rosenborg castle in copenhagen were
much more impressive

[britbob]

We just returned form a Celebrity Century Cruise to Baltic Capitals (June 2 - 14) and did visit one of the Gold Rooms. It was most impressive and well worth the extra $15. We were the only ones in that room, a small group of 8, and received personal attention and explanations of all the exhibits. This is totally different to other parts of the Hermitage which is very crowded in some areas.
All in all, I would not have missed this particular visit. The Peterhof Palaces were also excellent and the grounds were outstanding. Do consider the Catherine Block as an option rather than the main palace. We were the only ones in at that time and this made it a more memorable visit.
This option was suggested to us by Red October and we were all very happy to take their advice. They turned out to provide an excellent service and are to be highly recommended.

[Mapu]

There are 4 people in our Red October group that are interested in seeing the Gold Room. Anyone else? As mentioned earlier in this thread it is $15 additional per person and we need a minimum of 10 people for it to be arranged.

[dbh62ark]

Just FYI--Denrus will arrange this addition to the Hermitage tour for less than 10 people. (This is one of many areas where we found Denrus to be much more flexible than Red October.) It's a little more expensive per person than the $15 to add this feature with less than 10 people because it's my understanding that the extra fees are paid directly for the Hermitage guide that takes you through that room. If the Hermitage guide doesn't speak English, your private guide will interpret. It takes about 30-40 minutes for the Gold Rooms addition. For our tour, we're eating lunch in the van that day on the way back from Catherine's Palace at Pushkin so that we will have 3.5 hours at the Hermitage. We'll still see a minute fraction of the Hermitage's offerings, but the extra hour there is worth eating in the van for our group.

Happy travels to all,
Donna

[Mercury]

For me the Gold Room was the highlight of the visit to the Hermitage. It does of course depend on what you are most interested in. Also, children may well find this boring. For me, I have seen plenty of paintings in museums (including the Louvre) and this was a more unique experience.

Enjoy your trip - St Pete's is an AMAZING place!

[alpal1993]

I'd still be in the impressionist room if they didn't kick me out!Our guide was very informative and interesting.