Hermitage museum opening offshoot in Amsterdam where Russian art collection began 300 yrs ago

Russia’s Hermitage opens offshoot in Dutch capital

AMSTERDAM — The Hermitage is exhibiting czarist opulence at a new satellite museum in Amsterdam, the city where Peter the Great started Russia’s fabulous state art collection 300 years ago and which inspired the design for his own capital, St. Petersburg.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will formally open the Hermitage Amsterdam on Friday.

The museum is in a former Dutch nursing home built in the 1680s, about 15 years before the Russian czar first visited Amsterdam to study shipbuilding. It remained a retirement facility until the last patient left two years ago.

Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky said Thursday the Amsterdam project is part of a strategy to make some of the 3 million objects in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg more accessible to the world.