Dvortsovy I - Save the Hermitage
"Napoleon, if I’m not mistaken, attacked Russia
also in June —was it the twenty-fourth of June?"
- Iosif Orbeli, great Director of the Hermitage
8/7/1941 - The magnificent Winter Palace and the Hermitage along the Neva embankment.
Iosif Orbeli, director of the Hermitage, surrounded by the largest collection of paintings in the World. More than two million treasures to save and so little time to do it. Without the authorization from Moscow he told the guards to close the museum halls and admit no more visitors. The evacuation could not be delayed any longer.
1/7/1941 - The tons of boxes containing 500.000 articles had been stacked in the great Hermitage Hall. Now the soldiers are loading them in trucks, some already leaving in an endless column beside the Winter Palace and the Hermitage.
Most of the paintings were removed from their frames to facilitate transportation. Now frames rest in the floor waiting for the day they will be used again.
2/9/1941 - For many nights no bombs fell on the Winter Palace or the Hermitage, but the rain of shrapnel from AA guns crackled and sparkled like heat lightning on the vast pavement of Palace Square. Surrounded by craters opened by German artillery, Alexander Column stands still while several T-34 tanks pass under the arch of the General Staff Building.
18/8/1941 - This garden was created in 1896 for Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorova. She found the public access to exterior facades of the palace disconcerting, and disliked the way that the public would stare at the windows of the private apartments in the western part of the palace.
During the siege, citizens came to the Winter Palace or Hermitage to take surreal tours of the empty frames. During these, the curators would describe each picture that would have been in the frame in detail.
Disclaimer: This CJ includes original photos taken during the siege. To my knowledge none of them is protected by copyright, but if I were wrong I'm happy to delete any picture that infringes the law.
----------------------------------[AUTHOR'S COMMENTS]----------------------------------
I considered the possibility of editing the Palace Square picture full of nazi flags during an army parade, reproducing the hypotetical celebration that would have taken place if the city had fell to the Germans. However, I thought that since that was not an historical event it could be inapropiate, plus the nazi symbology is strictly forbidden in some countries. To avoid controversy I chose not to do it. It was not necessary after all, and probably even contrary to the spirit of this City Journal, which is the survival of the city.
The amazing pictures inside the Hermitage were posted by gnossienne in tumblr.
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