12 Destination Museums Worth Planning Your Next Trip Around

When Catherine the Great wasn’t busy being the country’s longest-ruling female ruler, she was ordering men to build both the Small and Large Hermitage buildings and amassing what would become the foundation of the modern museum collection. Today, The State Hermitage Museum includes five public areas — The Winter Palace, The Small Hermitage, The New Hermitage, The Hermitage Theater, and The Great (Old) Hermitage — as well as The General Staff Building and The Building of Menshikov Palace. Though each building houses its own range of works, the museum collectively includes many of the most architecturally and historically relevant structures in Russia.