Priceless treasures at state-of-the-art Hermitage Storage Museum.

While the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg confounded me with its over the top gilded halls and wanton extravagance, its storage museum at Staraya Derevnya impressed me with its state-of-the-art technology employed in the restoration of priceless artefacts.

Spread over 35,000 sq metres of floor space, this storage facility is staffed by expert artisans skilled in the arts of restoration and passionate about the preservation of history. While the museum is open to the public, it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and photography is strictly prohibited on the premises.

With canvases hanging on specially designed sliding racks, visitors are treated to works that are often not seen by others and works of which the artists are yet still unknown. The absence of provenance for some of the pieces has not detracted from their beauty or worth. If anything at all, there seems a particular fascination amongst many visitors for these works of mysterious origins. With over 3500 canvases from Russian artists ranging from the 17th to the 20th centuries, the guided tour is a whetting for my eyes and a feasting for my soul.

Apart from the canvasses, there is a large collection of furniture (even a chair belonging to Peter the Great which testifies to the ruler’s unusually tall stature). There are frescoes recovered from churches and palaces destroyed by the World Wars, a large tent presented to Catherine the Great by the Turkish Sultan Selim III in 1793 and a superb collection of carriages including the coronation carriage of Catherine the Great.