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Waterloo, Belgium

Waterloo (, ; Waterlô) is a municipality in Wallonia, located in the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium, which in 2011 had a population of 29,706 and an area of 21.03 km2. Waterloo lies a short distance south of Brussels, and immediately north-east of the larger town of Braine-l'Alleud. It is the site of the Battle of Waterloo, where the resurgent Napoleon was defeated for the final time in 1815. Waterloo lies immediately south of the official language border between Flanders and Wallonia.

Etymology
From Middle Dutch, composed of water (water, watery) + loo (forest, clearing in a forest, marsh, bog).

History
The name of Waterloo was mentioned for the first time in 1102 designating a small hamlet at the limit of what is today known as the Sonian Forest, along a major road linking Brussels, Genappe and a coal mine to the south. Waterloo was located at the intersection of the main road and a path leading to a small farming settlement in what is now Cense. The crossing can still be found today as the intersection of the Chaussée de Bruxelles with Boulevard de la Cense. Waterloo was a place where travellers and merchants, particularly those carrying coal from the mine to the south, could find rest and protection from bandits.

Waterloo was located in the Duchy of Brabant created in 1183 with Leuven as the capital city. The Duchy of Brabant extended from Luttre to 's-Hertogenbosch in 1477. Brussels became the capital city of the Duchy of Brabant in 1267 and the capital city of the Burgundian Netherlands in 1430.

Waterloo started to develop during the 17th century. A royal chapel was built in 1687 in Petit-Waterloo, and was extended in 1826, becoming the Church of Saint Joseph of Waterloo.

During the late 18th century, whilst the region was under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, a period of unrest marked the wake of the 1789 French Revolution. Reforms designed to quell those agitating to bring enlightenment ideas to the region were unsuccessful. In 1794, the French invaded, bringing an end to the region's Ancien Régime, encompassing the monasteries, their official record-keeping, and the privileges of the nobility.

Up until 1796, Waterloo was divided into two parts, Grand-Waterloo and Petit-Waterloo, depending, respectively, of the parishes of Braine-l'Alleud (Bishopric of Namur) and of Sint-Genesius-Rode (Bishopric of Mechelen). A new system based on municipalities was established under French rule. The municipality of Waterloo was created from Petit-Waterloo detached from Sint-Genesius-Rode and three former hamlets (Grand-Waterloo, Joli-Bois, Mont-Saint-Jean) detached from Braine-l’Alleud.

In 1813, half of the hamlet of Chenois was detached from Braine-l’Alleud and became part of Waterloo. In 1824, Waterloo grew again as the areas Roussart and Sainte-Gertrude from the Sonian Forest became part of the municipality. Waterloo had 1,571 inhabitants in 1801 and 3,202 in 1846.

In 1795, the invaded territories were divided into nine departments. Some municipalities, including Waterloo, became part of the Dyle department, which became the province of Brabant Méridional in 1815 under Dutch rule, following the defeat of Napoleon. Upon Belgian independence in 1830, it became part of the province of Brabant.

In 1977, the second half of the hamlet of Chenois was detached from Braine-l’Alleud and became part of Waterloo together with a part of the hamlet next to the Lion.

In 1995, the province of Brabant was divided to match the limits of the administrative regions of Wallonia, Brussels and Flanders created in 1980. The part in which Waterloo is situated became the province of Walloon Brabant.

Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo took place near Waterloo on 18 June 1815 between the First French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Seventh Coalition (troops from Prussia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick and Nassau), under the main allied commanders, the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal von Blücher.

Districts in Waterloo
Waterloo is divided into six districts: Faubourg Ouest (north-west of Chaussée de Bruxelles), Faubourg Est (north-east of Chaussée de Bruxelles), Chenois (west of the railway), Centre, Joli-Bois (south of centre) and Mont-St-Jean (north of the Waterloo battle field).

Demographics
Nearly one-fifth of the current registered population (5,640 inhabitants) is non-Belgian; many such residents work for institutions or companies in Brussels, a political centre of the European Union. These numbers were released by the municipality of Waterloo. The most common non-Belgian nationalities are the following: French (1,237 people), Italian (537), British (503), American (445) and Swedish (425).

It is one of the wealthiest towns in Wallonia.

Economy
Waterloo is home to the European headquarters of Mastercard. There is a Carrefour hypermarket in Mont-Saint-Jean, a Delhaize store, an Ibis Hotel, several BNP Paribas Fortis branches, office parks to the east of the town.

A row of shops, called Petit Paris is situated on the Chaussée de Bruxelles (which becomes Chaussée de Waterloo, or Waterloosesteenweg when leaving Waterloo in the north and nearing Brussels).

Education
The Argenteuil estate is host to a number of international and local educational establishments, including; the Scandinavian School of Brussels, the European School of Bruxelles-Argenteuil, "Den norske skolen i Brussel", and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.

St. John's International School is also located within the commune.

Lion's Mound

The Lion's Mound is a monument to the casualties of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, located on the spot where a musket ball hit the shoulder of William II of the Netherlands (the Prince of Orange) and knocked him from his horse during the battle. A statue of a lion, looking towards France, standing upon a stone-block pedestal surmounts the hill. Visitors can climb the 226 steps to the top of the hill for a panoramic vista of the battlefield.

Other attractions nearby related to the battle are the Battle Panorama Mural, Wellington Museum, and the Roman Catholic Church of St. Joseph, where Wellington is said to have prayed before going into battle and where British and Dutch plaques commemorating the fallen are now to be seen.

Argenteuil estate
In 1831, approximately 250 hectares of land in the Sonian Forest was acquired by Ferdinand De Meeus, a member of the Belgian nobility, who bestowed the name "Argenteuil" to the estate. The first "Château d'Argenteuil", built in 1835 was destroyed by a fire in 1847, and rebuilt between 1856 and 1858 using a design by Belgian architect, Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar, and extensive landscaping of the surrounding lands by Édouard Keilig. In the 1920s the De Meeûs family incorporated the estate into the "Domaine d'Argenteuil SA", and in 1929 sold 145 hectares of the land to American businessman, William Hallam Tuck. Tuck and his wife, Belgian heiress, Hilda Bunge, commissioned New York architect, William Delano, to design the second major residence on the Argenteuil estate, the "Château Bellevue". Whilst the couple occupied the property, it became known commonly as the "Château Tuck".

Château d'Argenteuil
In 1940, the Château d'Argenteuil, 20 hectares of its surrounding lands and a farm were sold to a community of Carmelite Sisters in exchange for their properties in Uccle, Brussels. However, the château was not suited to their needs, and they moved out in 1947. The Belgian government acquired the Château d'Argenteuil in 1949. In 1950, as part of preparations for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, the Belgian government used the chateau to relocate the French-speaking section of the École normale ménagère et agricole de l'État, an all-female normal school, from Laeken, the site of the exhibition. The château's bedrooms were refitted for boarders. The Belgian government later used the site for various Belgian state school establishments, building dedicated buildings for classrooms on the grounds of the château. In 1990, the Scandinavian School of Brussels, Queen Astrid School, purchased the Château d'Argenteuil and its grounds, and relocated there in 1992. From September 2016, the European School of Bruxelles-Argenteuil began operating on the same site.

Château Bellevue
In 1949, the Belgian government acquired the Château Bellevue, originally for use by the Belgian national rail company, the SNCB. In 1958 it was used as residence for distinguished visitors to the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. From 1961 it was the official residence of the Belgian royal family, King Leopold III and his wife Princess Lilian, up until her death in 2003. During discussions on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe there were proposals to turn the château into a residence for the mooted position of the President of the European Union. However, the Belgian government sold the Chateau Bellevue in September 2004.

Dames de Berlaymont
In 1960, Count Ludovic de Meeûs d'Argenteuil sold thirty hectares of the Argenteuil estate to the Dames de Berlaymont, who had to vacate their properties in Brussels following their acquisition by the Belgian state for the purpose of building a headquarters for the European Commission. The nuns established a new convent and boarding school on the site.

Château Cheval
The Château Cheval stood at the crossing of the main routes between Charleroi and Brussels, and Nivelles and Leuven. It was originally built in 1895 as the home of a French industrialist who had made his fortune in Mont-Saint-Jean, Waterloo following the opening of a chemical fertiliser plant in 1875. The château, with its four towers and ninety-nine windows, was too extravagant for the tastes of its owner, who found himself only able to sleep there once per week. Cheval gave it to his only daughter who occupied it with her husband until his death in 1962. The exorbitant costs associated with running the property led to its demolition in 1966.

Public transport
Waterloo railway station was opened on 1 February 1874, with the simultaneous opening of the railway line between Waterloo and Brussels. An extension of the line southwards to Nivelles, and then Luttre was opened on 1 June 1874, permitting travel onwards to Charleroi, along an existing line opened in 1843.

Today, Waterloo is served by local passenger trains on the Nivelles to Aalst line, with at least one train in each direction per hour. Non-stopping services between Waterloo and Brussels operate during peak times.

Sport
Waterloo is home to ASUB Waterloo, one of Belgium's most successful Rugby Union teams.

Waterloo is also home of Watducks Hockey Club, multiple Belgium champions of field hockey and European Champions in 2019 (EHL).

Notable residents
In September 1959 the Missionary Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of Fichermont, headquartered in Waterloo, became the home of Jeannine Deckers, who took the name Sister Luc-Gabrielle, and who would later become famous as The Singing Nun.

On 2 February 2018, the Belgian commune of Waterloo confirmed that former Catalonia president Carles Puigdemont had rented a villa and planned to establish his official residence there.

Twin towns — sister cities
Waterloo is twinned with:

title: Waterloo, Belgium


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Wavre

Wavre (Waver, ; Wåve) is a city and municipality of Wallonia, capital of the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium.

Wavre is in the Dyle valley. Most inhabitants speak French as their mother tongue and are called "Wavriens" and "Wavriennes".

The municipality consist of the following sub-municipalities: Bierges, Limal, and Wavre proper.

Wavre is also called "the City of the Maca", referring to the statue of the small boy trying to climb the wall of the city hall. Tradition holds that touching the Maca's buttocks brings a year of luck.

Roman and Medieval times
The foundations of a wealthy Roman villa were found very close to Wavre, complete with a portico and many rooms. This part of Gaul, however, was ravaged by the Germanic invasions in the 3rd and 4th century, and it is only in the year 1050 that Wavre was mentioned for the first time, as a dependency of the County of Leuven, part of the Brabant pagus. The chapel built by the counts near the former Gallo-Roman villa was ceded to the Affligem Abbey a few years later. By the 13th century a market already existed in the budding town built at the crossroads of the Brussels-Namur and Nivelles-Leuven roads. In 1222, Duke Henry I of Brabant granted the town its city charter. At around the same time, the Affligem Abbey expanded its Wavre possessions into a priory, which attracted pilgrims from a wide region around the city.

16th- to 18th-century disasters
The relative peace of the city came to an end on 8 March 1489, when Duke Albert of Saxony took it and pillaged it in retaliation for Wavre's sympathy with Brabant’s revolt against Austria. From then on until the beginning of the 18th century, the city went through one disaster after another. Between the destruction by Duke Charles of Guelders in 1504 and that brought by Louis XIV’s wars around 1700, Wavre would know several debilitating crises, either at the hand of foreign armies (e.g., the Spanish in 1604) or because of epidemics (1624–1625, 1668) or major fires (28 April 1695 and 17 July 1714). The 18th century was relatively prosperous, but a troubled period started again around 1790, with Wavre's participation in the Brabant Revolution against Austrian interests. After the Battle of Fleurus (1794), the city became French. Like many of its neighbours, the city suffered from mandatory conscription, curtailment of religious freedoms, and the dissolution of the old administrative offices.

From Waterloo until now
On 18 and 19 June 1815, the Battle of Wavre was fought here on the same day as the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon had sent Marshal Grouchy to pursue part of the retreating Prussian army under the command of General Johann von Thielmann. Despite hearing the cannon sound from nearby Waterloo, Grouchy decided to obey his orders and engage the one Prussian Corps in Wavre. By the time Grouchy's battle was over, Napoleon had already lost at Waterloo.

The century that followed saw the expansion of local industry, including foundries, a paper mill, and a sugar refinery. Wavre was severely affected by both World Wars, with heavy fighting, bombing and several houses put on fire. In the 21st century, Wavre enjoyed renewed prosperity as the capital of the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant created in 1995.

Attractions

 * The Gothic-style church of St John the Baptist was built in 1475. Its main tower houses a 50-bell carillon.
 * The city hall dates from the 18th century. It is housed in the former church of the Carmelites and features a cloistered courtyard.
 * In 1975, the first Walibi amusement park, named after Wavre, Limal, and Bierge, to the west of the city centre further up the Dyle. Since then, Walibi has become the largest amusement park in Belgium and spawned similar parks in France and the Netherlands. The park was once known as the best themepark in Europe and has over 1,000,000 visitors per year.
 * The Basilica of Our Lady of Basse-Wavre, Basilique Notre-Dame de Basse-Wavre is a centre of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics.

Folklore

 * The Jeu de Jean et Alice is a remake of a medieval play, more exactly a spoken, sung, and danced dialog between Jean and Alice, Lords of Wavre, and the city's population. The play commemorates the granting of the charter to the city in 1222; it is now an elaborate production (with more than 500 participants) that takes place every five years.
 * Since about 200 years ago, the Grand Tour, a religious procession takes place every year on the Sunday that follows June 24, feast of St John the Baptist, patron saint of the city.
 * The city's carnival includes a handful of traditional giants that take part in the festivities.

Infrastructure
Wavre is the location of the Wavre Transmitter, a broadcasting facility for shortwave, medium wave, FM and TV of the Belgian broadcasting society. As aerial for medium wave a guyed steel framework mast is used. It is the third tallest structure in Belgium. The aerials for FM and TV are on a free standing lattice tower. On 13 October 1983 a storm destroyed the main transmission mast for TV transmission.

Basse-Wavre railway station (Gare de Basse-Wavre) is located in Basse-Wavre ("lower Wavre") a suburb to the east of the city centre and lower down the Dyle.

Sports
Wavre is the home of RJ Wavre football club, a team with quite a prestigious past but which has struggled in recent times. The city is elected to host 2026 Hockey World Cup.

Notable people

 * Maurice Carême (1899–1978), poet was born in Wavre.
 * Jeanne Deckers (1933–1985), better known as The Singing Nun, lived for nearly 20 years in Wavre, with her partner Annie Pécher; the pair died together after taking overdoses of barbiturates and alcohol.
 * Charles Michel (1975–), President of the European Council and former Prime Minister of Belgium; served as an alderman from 2000 to 2006 and later mayor of Wavre from 2006 to 2018.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wavre


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Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson, (Scottish Gaelic: Adhamh MacFhearghais), also known as Ferguson of Raith (1 July N.S. /20 June O.S. 1723 – 22 February 1816), was a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Ferguson was sympathetic to traditional societies, such as the Highlands, for producing courage and loyalty. He criticized commercial society as making men weak, dishonourable and unconcerned for their community. Ferguson has been called "the father of modern sociology" for his contributions to the early development of the discipline. His best-known work is his Essay on the History of Civil Society.

Biography
Born at Logierait in Atholl, Perthshire, Scotland, the son of Rev Adam Ferguson, he received his education at Logierait Parish School, Perth Grammar School, and at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews (MA 1742). In 1745, owing to his knowledge of Gaelic, he gained appointment as deputy chaplain of the 43rd (afterwards the 42nd) regiment (the Black Watch), the licence to preach being granted him by special dispensation, although he had not completed the required six years of theological study.

It remains a matter of debate as to whether, at the Battle of Fontenoy (1745), Ferguson fought in the ranks throughout the day, and refused to leave the field, though ordered to do so by his colonel. Nevertheless, he certainly did well, becoming principal chaplain in 1746. He continued attached to the regiment till 1754, when, disappointed at not obtaining a living, he left the clergy and resolved to devote himself to literary pursuits.

After residing in Leipzig for a time, he returned to Edinburgh where in January 1757 he succeeded David Hume as librarian to the Faculty of Advocates (see Advocates' Library), but soon relinquished this office on becoming tutor in the family of the Earl of Bute. In 1759 Ferguson became professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and in 1764 transferred to the chair of "pneumatics" (mental philosophy) and moral philosophy.

In 1767, he published his Essay on the History of Civil Society, which was well received and translated into several European languages. In the mid-1770s he travelled again to the Continent and met Voltaire. His membership of The Poker Club is recorded in its minute book of 1776.

In 1776, appeared his anonymous pamphlet on the American Revolution in opposition to Dr Richard Price's Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, in which he sympathised with the views of the British legislature. In 1778 Ferguson was appointed secretary to the Carlisle Peace Commission which endeavoured, but without success, to negotiate an arrangement with the revolted colonies.

In 1780, he wrote the article "History" for the second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. The article is 40 pages long and replaced the article in the first edition, which was only one paragraph.

In 1783, appeared his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, it became very popular and went through several editions. Ferguson believed that the history of the Roman Republic during the period of their greatness formed a practical illustration of those ethical and political doctrines which he studied especially. The history reads well and impartially, and displays conscientious use of sources. The influence of the author's military experience shows itself in certain portions of the narrative. Tired of teaching, he resigned his professorship in 1785, and devoted himself to the revision of his lectures, which he published (1792) under the title of Principles of Moral and Political Science.

In his seventieth year, Ferguson, intending to prepare a new edition of the history, visited Italy and some of the principal cities of Europe, where he was received with honour by learned societies. From 1795 he resided successively at Neidpath Castle near Peebles, at Hallyards on Manor Water, and at St Andrews, where he died on 22 February 1816. He is buried in the churchyard of St Andrews Cathedral, against the east wall. His large mural monument includes a carved profile portrait in marble.

Ethics
In his ethical system Ferguson treats man as a social being, illustrating his doctrines by political examples. As a believer in the progression of the human race, he placed the principle of moral approbation in the attainment of perfection. Victor Cousin criticised Ferguson's speculations (see his Cours d'histoire de la philosophie morale an dix-huitième siècle, pt. II., 1839–1840):

"We find in his method the wisdom and circumspection of the Scottish school, with something more masculine and decisive in the results. The principle of perfection is a new one, at once more rational and comprehensive than benevolence and sympathy, which in our view places Ferguson as a moralist above all his predecessors."

By this principle Ferguson attempted to reconcile all moral systems. With Thomas Hobbes and Hume he admits the power of self-interest or utility, and makes it enter into morals as the law of self-preservation. Francis Hutcheson's theory of universal benevolence and Adam Smith's idea of mutual sympathy (now empathy) he combines under the law of society. But, as these laws appear as the means rather than the end of human destiny, they remain subordinate to a supreme end, and the supreme end of perfection.

In the political part of his system Ferguson follows Montesquieu, and pleads the cause of well-regulated liberty and free government. His contemporaries, with the exception of Hume, regarded his writings as of great importance (see Sir Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 214). Ferguson shared his republican contemporaries' fear that imperial expansion would undermine the liberty of a state, but he saw representative institutions as a solution to the dangers posed by an expanding state. He defended the British Empire, but argued that political representation was key to prevent it from becoming tyrannical.

Social thought
Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) drew on classical authors and contemporary travel literature, to analyze modern commercial society with a critique of its abandonment of civic and communal virtues. Central themes in Ferguson's theory of citizenship are conflict, play, political participation and military valor. He emphasized the ability to put oneself in another's shoes, saying "fellow-feeling" was so much an "appurtenance of human nature" as to be a "characteristic of the species." Like his friends Adam Smith and David Hume as well as other Scottish intellectuals, he stressed the importance of the spontaneous order; that is, that coherent and even effective outcomes might result from the uncoordinated actions of many individuals.

Ferguson saw history as a two-tiered synthesis of natural history and social history, to which all humans belong. Natural history is created by God; so are humans, who are progressive. Social history is, in accordance with this natural progress, made by humans, and because of that factor it experiences occasional setbacks. But in general, humans are empowered by God to pursue progress in social history. Humans live not for themselves but for God's providential plan. He emphasized aspects of medieval chivalry as ideal masculine characteristics. British gentleman and young men were advised to dispense with aspects of politeness considered too feminine, such as the constant desire to please, and to adopt less superficial qualities that suggested inner virtue and courtesy toward the 'fairer sex.'

Ferguson was a leading advocate of the Idea of Progress. He believed that the growth of a commercial society through the pursuit of individual self-interest could promote a self-sustaining progress. Yet paradoxically Ferguson also believed that such commercial growth could foster a decline in virtue and thus ultimately lead to a collapse similar to Rome's. Ferguson, a devout Presbyterian, resolved the apparent paradox by placing both developments in the context of a divinely ordained plan that mandated both progress and human free will. For Ferguson, the knowledge that humanity gains through its actions, even those actions resulting in temporary retrogression, form an intrinsic part of its progressive, asymptotic movement toward an ultimately unobtainable perfectibility.

Ferguson was influenced by classical humanism and such writers as Tacitus, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes. The fellow members of Edinburgh's Select Society, which included David Hume and Adam Smith, were also major influences. Ferguson believed that civilization is largely about laws that restrict our independence as individuals but provide liberty in the sense of security and justice. He warned that social chaos usually leads to despotism. The members of civil society give up their liberty-as-autonomy, which savages possess, in exchange for liberty-as-security, or civil liberty. Montesquieu used a similar argument.

Smith emphasized capital accumulation as the driver of growth, but Ferguson suggested innovation and technical advance were more important, and he is therefore in some ways more in line with modern thinking. According to Smith, commerce tends to make men 'dastardly'. This foreshadows a theme Ferguson, borrowing freely from Smith, took up to criticize capitalism. Ferguson's critique of commercial society went far beyond that of Smith, and influenced Hegel and Marx. The Essay has been seen as an innovative attempt to reclaim the tradition of civic republican citizenship in modern Britain, and an influence on the ideas of republicanism held by the American Founding Fathers.

Personal life
He married Katherine Burnett in 1767. Ferguson was first cousin, close friend and colleague to Joseph Black M.D and Katie Burnett was Black's niece. They produced seven children the eldest Adam Ferguson (British Army officer) close friend to Sir Walter Scott, followed by James, Joseph, John, Isabella, Mary and Margaret. John (John MacPherson Ferguson) was a Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy.

Ferguson suffered an attack of paralysis in 1780 but fully recovered and became a vegetarian for the rest of his life. Ferguson also abstained from alcoholic drink. He did not dine out unless with his first cousin and great friend Joseph Black.

Main works

 * An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
 * Reprinted in 1995 with a new introduction by Louis Schneider. Transaction Publishers, London, 1995.
 * The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783)
 * Principles of Moral and Political Science; being chiefly a retrospect of lectures delivered in the College of Edinburgh (1792)
 * Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769)
 * Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia (1756)

title: Adam Ferguson


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Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage Museum (Государственный Эрмитаж) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.

Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them). The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.

Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are all open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard.

Etymology
A hermitage is the dwelling of a hermit or recluse. The word derives from Old French hermit, ermit "hermit, recluse", from Late Latin eremita, from Greek eremites, that means "people who live alone", which is in turn derived from ἐρημός (erēmos), "desert".

Buildings
Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace.

Collections
The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from the 13th to the 20th centuries.

Egyptian antiquities
Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace.

Classical antiquities
The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by German architect Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and granite.

The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the 2.57 m high Kolyvan Vase, weighing 19 t, made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on the ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries.

The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artifacts from the third millennium – fifth century BC, ancient Greek pottery, items from the Greek cities of the North Pontic Greek colonies, Hellenistic sculpture and jewellery, including engraved gems and cameos, such as the famous Gonzaga Cameo, Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from the first century BC - fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures. One of the highlights of the collection is the Tauride Venus, which, according to latest research, is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it was thought before. There are, however, only a few pieces of authentic Classical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments.

Prehistoric art
On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artifacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric artifacts date from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire. Among them is a renowned collection of the art and culture of nomadic tribes of the Altai from Pazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest surviving knotted-pile carpet and a well-preserved wooden chariot, both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection of Urartu artifacts from Armenia and Western Armenia. Many of them were excavated at Teishebaini under the supervision of Boris Piotrovsky, former director of the Hermitage Museum.

Jewelry and decorative art
Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground floor in the southwest corner of the Winter Palace, features jewellery from the Pontic steppes, Caucasus and Asia, in particular Scythian and Sarmatian gold.

Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century golden Peacock Clock by James Cox and a collection of mosaics. Two galleries spanning the west side of the Small Hermitage from the Northern to Southern Pavilion house an exhibition of Western European decorative and applied art from the 12th to 15th century and the fine art of the Low Countries from the 15th and 16th centuries.

Italian Renaissance
The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stakenschneider in revival styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them. They feature works of Italian Renaissance artists, including Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, as well as Benois Madonna and Madonna Litta attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or his school.

The Italian Renaissance galleries continues in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage with paintings, sculpture, majolica and tapestry from Italy of the 15th–16th centuries, including Conestabile Madonna and Madonna with Beardless St. Joseph by Raphael.

Italian and Spanish fine art
The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the center of the museum complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights. These are adorned with 19th-century Russian lapidary works and feature Italian and Spanish canvases of the 16th–18th centuries, including Veronese, Giambattista Pittoni, Tintoretto, Velázquez and Murillo.

Knights' Hall
The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from the 15th–17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection.

The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting adjoins the Knights' Hall and also flanks the skylight rooms. It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style as a prelude to the museum and features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova and his followers. In the middle, the gallery opens to the main staircase of the New Hermitage, which served as the entrance to the museum before the October Revolution of 1917, but is now closed.

Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque
The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including the large collections of Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt.

German, Swiss, British and French fine art
The first floor rooms on the southern facade of the Winter Palace are occupied by the collections of German fine art of the 16th century and French fine art of the 15th–18th centuries, including paintings by Poussin, Lorrain, Watteau. The collections of French decorative and applied art from the 17th–18th centuries and British applied and fine art from the 16th–19th century, including Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, are on display in nearby rooms facing the courtyard.

Russian art
The richly decorated interiors of the first floor of the Winter Palace on its eastern, northern and western sides are part of the Russian culture collection and host the exhibitions of Russian art from the 11th-19th centuries.

French Neoclassical, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist art
French Neoclassical, Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, including works by Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin, are displayed on the fourth floor of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff Building. Also displayed are paintings by Camille Pissarro (Boulevard Montmartre, Paris), Paul Cézanne (Mount Sainte-Victoire), Alfred Sisley, Henri Morel, and Degas.

Modern, German Romantic and other 19th–20th century art
Modern art is displayed in the General Staff Building (Saint Petersburg). It features Matisse, Derain and other fauvists, Picasso, Malevich, Petrocelli, Kandinsky, Giacomo Manzù, Giorgio Morandi and Rockwell Kent. A large room is devoted to the German Romantic art of the 19th century, including several paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The second floor of the Western wing features collections of the Oriental art (from China, India, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, Byzantium and Near East).

Origins: Catherine's collection
Catherine the Great started her art collection in 1764 by purchasing paintings from Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. He assembled the collection for Frederick II of Prussia, who ultimately refused to purchase it. Thus, Gotzkowsky provided 225 or 317 paintings (conflicting accounts list both numbers), mainly Flemish and Dutch, as well as others, including 90 not precisely identified, to the Russian crown. The collection consisted of Rembrandt (13 paintings), Rubens (11 paintings), Jacob Jordaens (7 paintings), Anthony van Dyck (5 paintings), Paolo Veronese (5 paintings), Frans Hals (3 paintings, including Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove), Raphael (2 paintings), Holbein (2 paintings), Titian (1 painting), Jan Steen (The Idlers), Hendrik Goltzius, Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick van Balen and Gerrit van Honthorst. Perhaps some of the most famous and notable artworks that were a part of Catherine's original purchase from Gotzkowsky were Danaë, painted by Rembrandt in 1636; Descent from the Cross, painted by Rembrandt in 1624; and Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove, painted by Frans Hals in 1650. These paintings remain in the Hermitage collection today.

In 1764, Catherine commissioned Yury Felten to build an extension on the east of the Winter Palace which he completed in 1766. Later it became the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. From 1767 to 1769, French architect Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the Northern Pavilion on the Neva embankment. Between 1767 and 1775, the extensions were connected by galleries, where Catherine put her collections. The entire neoclassical building is now known as the Small Hermitage. During the time of Catherine, the Hermitage was not a public museum and few people were allowed to view its holdings. Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe also rebuilt rooms in the second story of the south-east corner block that was originally built for Elizabeth and later occupied by Peter III. The largest room in this particular apartment was the Audience Chamber (also called the Throne Hall) which consisted of 227 square meters.

The Hermitage buildings served as a home and workplace for nearly a thousand people, including the Imperial family. In addition to this, they also served as an extravagant showplace for all kinds of Russian relics and displays of wealth prior to the art collections. Many events were held in these buildings including masquerades for the nobility, grand receptions and ceremonies for state and government officials. The "Hermitage complex" was a creation of Catherine's that allowed all kinds of festivities to take place in the palace, the theatre and even the museum of the Hermitage. This helped solidify the Hermitage as not only a dwelling place for the Imperial family, but also as an important symbol and memorial to the imperial Russian state. Today, the palace and the museum are one and the same. In Catherine's day, the Winter Palace served as a central part of what was called the Palace Square. The Palace Square served as St. Petersburg's nerve center by linking it to all the city's most important buildings. The presence of the Palace Square was extremely significant to the urban development of St. Petersburg, and while it became less of a nerve center later into the 20th century, its symbolic value was still very much preserved.

Catherine acquired the best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors. In 1769, she purchased Brühl's collection, consisting of over 600 paintings and a vast number of prints and drawings, in Saxony. Three years later, she bought Crozat's collection of paintings in France with the assistance of Denis Diderot. Next, in 1779, she acquired the collection of 198 paintings that once belonged to Robert Walpole in London followed by a collection of 119 paintings in Paris from Count Baudouin in 1781. Catherine's favorite items to collect were believed to be engraved gems and cameos. At the inaugural exhibit of the Hermitage, opened by Charles, Prince of Wales in November 2000, there was an entire gallery devoted to representing and displaying Catherine's favorite items. In this gallery her cameos are displayed along with cabinet made by David Roentgen, which holds her engraved gems. As the symbol of Minerva was frequently used and favored by Catherine to represent her patronage of the arts, a cameo of Catherine as Minerva is also displayed here. This particular cameo was created for her by her daughter-in-law, the Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna. This is only a small representation of Catherine's vast collection of many antique and contemporary engraved gems and cameos.

The collection soon overgrew the building. In her lifetime, Catherine acquired 4,000 paintings from the old masters, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and a natural history collection filling two galleries, so in 1771 she commissioned Yury Felten to build another major extension. The neoclassical building was completed in 1787 and has come to be known as the Large Hermitage or Old Hermitage. Catherine also gave the name of the Hermitage to her private theatre, built nearby between 1783 and 1787 by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi. In London in 1787, Catherine acquired the collection of sculpture that belonged to Lyde Browne, mostly Ancient Roman marbles. Catherine used them to adorn the Catherine Palace and park in Tsarskoye Selo, but later they became the core of the Classical Antiquities collection of the Hermitage. From 1787 to 1792, Quarenghi designed and built a wing along the Winter Canal with the Raphael Loggias to replicate the loggia in the Apostolic Palace in Rome designed by Donato Bramante and frescoed by Raphael.

Catherine's collection of at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through her art collection she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron of the arts. She was particularly fond of the Roman deity Minerva, whose characteristics according to classical tradition are military prowess, wisdom, and patronage of the arts. Using the title Catherine the Minerva, she created new institutions of literature and culture and also participated in many projects of her own, mostly play writing. The representation of Catherine alongside Minerva would come to be a tradition of enlightened patronage in Russia.

Expansion in the 19th century
In 1815, Alexander I of Russia purchased 38 pictures from the heirs of Joséphine de Beauharnais, most of which had been looted by the French in Kassel during the war. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was then considered the largest in the world. Also among Alexander's purchases from Josephine's estate were the first four sculptures by the neoclassical Italian sculptor Antonio Canova to enter the Hermitage collection.

Between 1840 and 1843, Vasily Stasov redesigned the interiors of the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. In 1838, Nicholas I commissioned the neoclassical German architect Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Space for the museum was made next to the Small Hermitage by the demolition of the Shepelev Palace and royal stables. The construction was overseen by the Russian architects Vasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov from 1842 to 1851 and incorporated Quarenghi's wing with the Raphael Loggias.

The New Hermitage was opened to the public on 5 February 1852. In the same year the Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum emerged and was particularly enriched by items given by the Duke of Leuchtenberg, Nicholas I's son-in-law. Meanwhile, from 1851 to 1860, the interiors of the Old Hermitage were redesigned by Andrei Stackensneider to accommodate the State Assembly, Cabinet of Ministers and state apartments. Stakenschneider created the Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage from 1851 to 1858.

In 1861, the Hermitage purchased from the Papal government part of the Giampietro Campana collection, which consisted mostly classical antiquities. These included over 500 vases, 200 bronzes and a number of marble statues. The Hermitage acquired Madonna Litta, which was then attributed to Leonardo, in 1865, and Raphael's Connestabile Madonna in 1870. In 1884 in Paris, Alexander III of Russia acquired the collection of Alexander Basilewski, featuring European medieval and Renaissance artifacts. In 1885, the Arsenal collection of arms and armour, founded by Alexander I of Russia, was transferred from the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo to the Hermitage. In 1914, Leonardo's Benois Madonna was added to the collection.

After the October Revolution
Immediately after the Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Hermitage and the Winter Palace, the former Imperial residence, were proclaimed state museums and eventually merged.

The range of the Hermitage's exhibits was further expanded when private art collections from several palaces of the Russian Tsars and numerous private mansions were nationalized and redistributed among major Soviet state museums. Particularly notable was the influx of old masters from the Catherine Palace, the Alexander Palace, the Stroganov Palace, and the Yusupov Palace, as well as from other palaces of Saint Petersburg and suburbs.

In 1922, a collection of 19th-century European paintings was transferred to the Hermitage from the Academy of Arts. In turn, in 1927 about 500 important paintings were transferred to the Central Museum of old Western art in Moscow at the insistence of the Soviet authorities.

In 1928, the Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to compile a list of valuable works of art for export. From 1930 to 1934, over two thousand works of art from the Hermitage collection were clandestinely sold at auctions abroad or directly to foreign officials and businesspeople. The sold items included Raphael's Alba Madonna, Titian's Venus with a Mirror, and Jan van Eyck's Annunciation, among other world known masterpieces by Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and others. In 1931 Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from the Hermitage and later donated them to form a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (see also Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings).

With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before the Siege of Leningrad started, two trains with a considerable part of the collections were evacuated to Sverdlovsk. Two bombs and a number of shells hit the museum buildings during the siege. The museum opened an exhibition in November 1944. In October 1945 the evacuated collections were brought back, and in November 1945 the museum reopened.

In 1948, 316 works of Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and modern art from the collection of the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, originating mostly from the nationalized collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov before the war, were transferred to the Hermitage, including works by Matisse and Picasso.

On 15 June 1985, a man later judged insane attacked Rembrandt's painting Danaë, displayed in the museum. He threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The restoration of the painting had been accomplished by Hermitage conservationists by 1997, and Danaë is now on display behind armoured glass.

The Hermitage since 1991
In 1991, it became known that some paintings looted by the Red Army in Germany in 1945 were held in the Hermitage. But only in October 1994 did the Hermitage officially announce that it had secretly been holding a major trove of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from German private collections. The exhibition "Hidden Treasures Revealed", where 74 of the paintings were displayed for the first time, was opened on 30 March 1995 in the Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace and lasted a year. Of the paintings, all but one originated from private rather than state German collections, including 56 paintings from the Otto Krebs collection, as well as the collection of Bernhard Koehler and paintings previously belonging to Otto Gerstenberg and his daughter Margarete Scharf, including the world-famous Place de la Concorde by Degas, In the Garden by Renoir, and White House at Night by Van Gogh. Some of the paintings are now on permanent display in several small rooms in the northeastern corner of the Winter Palace on the first floor.

In 1993, the Russian government gave the eastern wing of the nearby General Staff Building across the Palace Square to the Hermitage and the new exhibition rooms in 1999. Since 2003, the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace has been open to the public.

In 2003, the Hermitage loaned 142 pieces to the University of Michigan Museum of Art for an exhibition titled The Romanovs Collect: European Art from the Hermitage.

In December 2004, the museum discovered another looted work of art: Venus Disarming Mars by Rubens was once in the collection of the Rheinsberg Palace near Berlin, and was apparently looted by Soviet troops from the Königsberg Castle in East Prussia in 1945. At the time, Mikhail Piotrovsky said the painting would be cleaned and displayed.

The museum announced in July 2006 that 221 minor items, including jewelry, Orthodox icons, silverware and richly enameled objects, had been stolen. The value of the stolen items was estimated to be approximately $543,000. By the end of 2006 several of the stolen items had been recovered.

In March 2020, Apple released a continuous 5 hour and 19 minute one shot film recorded entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro detailing many rooms of the museum which highlighted not only the artwork, but also the architecture, and live movement pieces interspersed throughout.

Dependencies
In recent years, the Hermitage launched several dependencies abroad and domestically.

Hermitage-Kazan Exhibition Center
The Hermitage dependency in Kazan (Tatarstan, Russia), opened in 2005. It was created with support from President of the Republic of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and is a subdivision of the Kazan Kremlin State Historical and Architectural Museum-Park. The museum is situated in the Kazan Kremlin in an edifice previously occupied by the Junker School built in the beginning of the 19th century.

Ermitage Italia, Ferrara
Following the prior experiences in London, Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Kazan, the Hermitage foundation decided to create a further branch in Italy with the launch of a national bid. Several northern Italian cities expressed interest such as Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Turin. In 2007, the honor was awarded to the city of Ferrara which proposed its Castle Estense as the base. Since then, the new institution called Ermitage Italia started a research and scientific collaboration with the Hermitage foundation.

Hermitage-Vyborg Center
Hermitage-Vyborg Center was opened in June 2010 in Vyborg, Leningrad Oblast.

Hermitage Exhibition Center, Vladivostok
A Hermitage branch is due to open in Vladivostok by 2016, and the regional government has allocated more than Rb17.7 million ($558,000) for preliminary reconstruction work on a mansion in Vladivostok's historic downtown district to house the satellite.

Hermitage-Siberia, Omsk
The Hermitage-Siberia is due to open in Omsk in 2016.

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Vilnius
In recent years, there have been proposals to open a Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in the capital city of Lithuania. Like the former Las Vegas dependency, the museum is to combine artworks from the Saint Petersburg Hermitage with works from the New York Guggenheim Museum.

Former dependencies
The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas opened on 7 October 2001 and closed on 11 May 2008. The Hermitage Rooms in London's Somerset House opened on 25 November 2000. In 2004, the rooms hosted Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands, a joint exhibition with the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. The exhibition was closed permanently in November 2007 due to poor visitor numbers.

The dependency of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam was known as the Hermitage Amsterdam, and was located in the former Amstelhof building. It opened on 24 February 2004 in a small building on the Nieuwe Herengracht in Amsterdam, awaiting the closing of the retirement home which still occupied the Amstelhof building until 2007. Between 2007 and 2009, the Amstelhof was renovated and made suitable for the housing of the Amsterdam Hermitage. The Amsterdam Hermitage was opened on 19 June 2009 by President Dmitry Medvedev and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Amsterdam Hermitage severed ties with St. Petersburg, being renamed to H'ART Museum the following year.

Hermitage directors

 * Florian Gilles
 * Stepan Gedeonov (1863–78)
 * Alexander Vasilchikov (1879–88)
 * Sergei Nikitich Trubetskoi (1888–99)
 * Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1899–1909)
 * Dmitry Tolstoi (1909–1918)
 * Boris Legran (1931–1934)
 * Iosif Orbeli (1934–1951)
 * Mikhail Artamonov (1951–1964)
 * Boris Piotrovsky (1964–1990)
 * Mikhail Piotrovsky (1992–present)

Volunteer service
The Hermitage Volunteer Service offers all those interested a unique opportunity to involve themselves in running this world-renowned museum. The program not only aids the Hermitage with its external and internal activities but also serves as an informal link between the museum staff and the public, bringing the specific knowledge of the museum's experts to the community. Volunteers may also develop projects reflecting their own personal goals and interests: communicate a feeling of responsibility to the youth so as to help them understand the value of tradition and the necessity of its preservation.

Cats
A population of cats lives on the museum grounds and serves as an attraction.

Films

 * Russian Ark (2002), the Russian film by Alexander Sokurov, was filmed entirely in the Hermitage Museum, showing the Winter Palace at various stages of its history.
 * War and Peace (1966–67), an Oscar-winning Soviet adaptation of the 1869 novel by Leo Tolstoy, was partially filmed in the Winter Palace.

Television
Russia-K, a Russian national television channel, has been presenting the various art collections of the Hermitage to the general public for years. There are a series of programs that have aired entitled My Hermitage that have been particularly successful. All of these programs are organized by the Director of the Hermitage, Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, and are quite similar to the broadcasts created by Academician Boris Piotrovsky, who is Mikhail's father. These programs were first broadcast through the Soviet Union's 'First' channel, airing at the height of the museum's boom. During this time, this channel recorded more than three million visitors every year, mostly from the Soviet Union. Another program created by the Hermitage was called The Treasures of St. Petersburg, and was broadcast on the St. Petersburg regional television. This program gave insight into what exhibitions were being displayed at the Hermitage.

Treasures of St Petersburg & The Hermitage, (2003) a three-part documentary series for Channel 5 in the UK, directed by Graham Addicott and produced by Pille Runk.

Hermitage Revealed (2014) is a BBC documentary from Margy Kinmonth. The film tells the story of its journey from imperial palace to state museum, investigating remarkable tales of dedication, devotion, ownership and ultimate sacrifice, showing how the collection came about, how it survived tumultuous revolutionary times and what makes the Hermitage unique today.

Literature

 * To the Hermitage, a 2000 novel by Malcolm Bradbury, retells the story of Diderot's journey to Russia to meet Catherine the Great in her Hermitage.
 * Petersburg, a 1913 novel by Andrey Bely, features the Winter Canal near the palace as one of its central locations, but never names the Winter Palace directly.
 * Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell, features as one of its protagonists a woman who works for an art counterfeiting ring whilst masquerading as a docent in a gallery room on the upper floor of the Large Hermitage.
 * The Madonnas of Leningrad, a novel by Debra Dean, features the Hermitage during World War II.
 * Sancar Seckiner's 2017 book Thilda's House (Thilda'nın Evi) includes a chapter highlighting the writer's experience at the Hermitage Museum by indicating several masterworks of the 15th–19th centuries. ISBN 978-605-4160-88-4

Games

 * The Hermitage appears in the video games Civilization IV, Civilization V and Civilization VI as a wonder of the world.
 * The Hermitage appears in the first mission of the Soviet campaign in the video game Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3; it is under attack from forces of the Empire of the Rising Sun.

title: Hermitage Museum


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Grantchester

Grantchester is a village and civil parish on the River Cam or Granta in South Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about 2 miles south of Cambridge.

Name
The village of Grantchester is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as Grantesete and Grauntsethe. Before, it is also mentioned briefly in book IV, chapter 19 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. John de Grauntsete, a lawyer who had a successful career as a judge in Ireland, was born in Grantchester, c. 1270, and took his surname from his birthplace. The present name derives from the common Old English suffix -ceaster (variously developed as "-cester", "-caster", and -"chester"), used in names of forts or fortified cities throughout England.

Grantchester is sometimes identified as the Cair Grauth ("Fort Granta") listed in the History of the Britons among the 28 cities of Britain, but the Roman Duroliponte and subsequent major British and Saxon settlements in the area were at Castle Hill in Cambridge, whose Old English name was Grantabrycge. The confusion arises from the lower stretches of the Granta having been renamed the Cam after the city.

Overview
Grantchester is said to have the world's highest concentration of Nobel Prize winners, most of these presumably being current or retired academics from the nearby University of Cambridge. Students and tourists often travel from Cambridge by punt to picnic in the meadows or take tea at The Orchard. In 1897, a group of Cambridge students persuaded the owner of Orchard House to serve them tea in its apple orchard, and this became a regular practice. Lodgers at Orchard House included the Edwardian poet Rupert Brooke, who later moved next door to the Old Vicarage. In 1912, while in Berlin, he wrote a poem of homesickness entitled "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester". The house is currently the home of the Cambridge scientist Mary Archer and her husband, Jeffrey Archer. Grantchester has been the home since 1969 of the sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld OBE.

The footpath to Cambridge that runs beside Grantchester Meadows is nicknamed the Grantchester Grind. Grantchester Grind is the title of a 1995 comic novel written by Tom Sharpe. Further upstream is Byron's Pool, named after Lord Byron, who is said (by Brooke, at least) to have swum there. The pool is now below a modern weir where the Bourn Brook flows into the River Cam. Byron's Pool is a Local Nature Reserve.

In popular culture
Grantchester is the subject of "Grantchester Meadows" (composed and performed by Roger Waters) a song by Pink Floyd, with the village being home to band member David Gilmour. A few years later, Gilmour also wrote a song about Grantchester Meadows, called "Fat Old Sun". The village is also the setting for James Runcie's sleuth novels The Grantchester Mysteries, adapted as an ITV drama titled Grantchester shown in the UK from autumn 2014 and filmed on location in Grantchester.

Grantchester Church
The oldest parts of the Church of St Andrew and St Mary (Church of England) date from the twelfth century. The chancel is mid-fourteenth century and the tower is late-fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The porch is sixteenth century. The nave was extensively restored in 1876–1877. The church is a Grade II* listed building. Rachel Rosborough became vicar in 2017.

Graveyard
The church is surrounded by a graveyard, where the burials include:
 * Constantine Walter Benson (1909–1982), ornithologist and author
 * Francis Burkitt (1864–1935), theologian
 * Anne Clough (1820–1892), the first principal of Newnham College, Cambridge
 * Dermot Freyer (1883-1970), Irish author and political activist
 * Irving B. Fritz (1927–1996), physiologist and endocrinologist
 * Sir James Gray (1891–1975), zoologist
 * Dame Elizabeth Hill (1900–1996), academic linguist
 * Sir Robert Yewdall Jennings (1913–2004), President of the International Court of Justice.
 * Frank Kingdon-Ward (1885–1958), botanist and explorer
 * Sir Desmond Lee (1908–1993), classical scholar, headmaster of Clifton College and Winchester College, President of Hughes Hall, Cambridge.
 * J. Rawson Lumby (1831–1895), theologian
 * Arthur Henry Mann (1850–1929), organist and composer of hymn tunes
 * Michael McCrum (1924–2005), Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Headmaster of Tonbridge School and Eton College.
 * Jean Purdy (1945-1985), embryologist and co-founder of the Bourn Hall Clinic with Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards
 * G. W. Shaw (1928–2006), biologist and expert on academic dress
 * Robert Stevenson (1905–1986), film writer and director
 * Charles Swainson (1820–1887), theologian
 * David J. Thouless (1934–2019), physicist
 * Robert H. Thouless (1894–1984), psychologist and parapsychologist

It also contains the Commonwealth war graves of three British Army soldiers of the First World War and an airman of the Second World War.

Barrel race
Every year on Boxing Day (26 December), Grantchester holds an inter-village barrel race which is around 40 minutes long and ends with a hog roast at the Rupert Brooke pub. This tradition dates back to the 1960s.

Legends
An underground passage is said to run from the Old Manor house to King's College Chapel two miles away. It was said that a fiddler who offered to follow the passage set off playing his fiddle; the music became fainter and fainter, until it was heard no more and the fiddler was never seen or heard of again. This story is told of many supposed tunnels. On a 17th-century map of Grantchester, one of the fields is called Fiddler's Close.

title: Grantchester


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Patriarch

The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and in certain cases also popes – such as the Pope of Rome or Pope of Alexandria, and catholicoi – such as Catholicos Karekin II, and Baselios Thomas I Catholicos of the East).

The word is derived from Greek πατριάρχης (patriarchēs), meaning "chief or father of a family", a compound of πατριά (patria), meaning "family", and ἄρχειν (archein), meaning "to rule".

Originally, a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is termed patriarchy. Historically, a patriarch has often been the logical choice to act as ethnarch of the community identified with his religious confession within a state or empire of a different creed (such as Christians within the Ottoman Empire). The term developed an ecclesiastical meaning within Christianity. The office and the ecclesiastical circumscription of a Christian patriarch is termed a patriarchate.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are referred to as the three patriarchs of the people of Israel, and the period during which they lived is termed the Patriarchal Age. The word patriarch originally acquired its religious meaning in the Septuagint version of the Bible.

Patriarchs
In the Catholic Church, the bishop who is head of a particular autonomous church, known in canon law as a church sui iuris, is ordinarily a patriarch, though this responsibility can be entrusted to a major archbishop, metropolitan, or other prelate for a number of reasons.

Since the Council of Nicaea, the bishop of Rome has been recognized as the first among patriarchs. That council designated three bishops with this 'supra-Metropolitan' title: Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. In the Pentarchy formulated by Justinian I (527–565), the emperor assigned as a patriarchate to the Bishop of Rome the whole of Christianized Europe (including almost all of modern Greece), except for the region of Thrace, the areas near Constantinople, and along the coast of the Black Sea. He included in this patriarchate also the western part of North Africa. The jurisdictions of the other patriarchates extended over Roman Asia, and the rest of Africa. Justinian's system was given formal ecclesiastical recognition by the Quinisext Council of 692, which the see of Rome has, however, not recognized.

There were at the time bishops of other apostolic sees that operated with patriarchal authority beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, such as the Catholicos of Selucia-Ctesephon.

Today, the patriarchal heads of Catholic autonomous churches are: Four more of the Eastern Catholic Churches are headed by a prelate known as a "Major Archbishop," a title essentially equivalent to that of Patriarch and originally created by Pope Paul VI in 1963 for Josyf Slipyj.
 * The Patriarch of Rome (Pope), as head of the Latin Church
 * The Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria (Pope) and head of the Coptic Catholic Church, recognised 1824
 * The Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and head of the Maronite Church, recognised 685
 * The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, of Alexandria and of Jerusalem, head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church; in his case, Antioch is the actual and sole patriarchate, Alexandria and Jerusalem are just titular (once residential) patriarchates vested in his see.
 * The Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and head of the Syriac Catholic Church
 * The Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad and head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, recognised 1553
 * The Armenian Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia and head of the Armenian Catholic Church, recognised 1742

Minor Latin patriarchates
Minor patriarchs do not have jurisdiction over other metropolitan bishops. The title is granted purely as an honour for various historical reasons. They take precedence after the heads of autonomous churches in full communion, whether pope, patriarch, or major archbishop.
 * The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, established 1099.
 * The Patriarch of the East Indies, a titular patriarchal see, united to Goa and Daman, established 1886.
 * The Patriarch of Lisbon, established 1716.
 * The Patriarch of Venice, established 1451.

Historical Latin patriarchates

 * The Patriarch of Aquileia – with rival line of succession moved to Grado – dissolved in 1752.
 * The Patriarch of Grado – in 1451 merged with the Bishopric of Castello and Venice to form the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Venice (later a residential Patriarchate itself).
 * The Patriarch of the West Indies – a titular patriarchal see, vacant since 1963.
 * The Latin Patriarch of Antioch – title abolished in 1964.
 * The titular Latin Patriarch of Alexandria – title abolished in 1964.
 * The Latin Patriarch of Constantinople – title abolished in 1964.
 * The Latin Patriarchate of Ethiopia – 1555 to 1663, never effective, only held by Iberian Jesuits

Patriarch as title ad personam
The pope can confer the rank of patriarch without any see, upon an individual archbishop, as happened on 24 February 1676 to Alessandro Crescenzi, of the Somascans, former Latin Titular Patriarch of Alexandria (19 January 1671 – retired 27 May 1675), who nevertheless resigned the title on 9 January 1682.

"Patriarch of the West"
In theological and other scholarly literature of the Early Modern period, the title "Patriarch of the West" (Latin: Patriarcha Occidentis; Greek: Πατριάρχης τῆς Δύσεως) was mainly used as designation for the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over the Latin Church in the West.

The title was not included in the 2006 Annuario Pontificio. On 22 March 2006, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity offered an explanation for the decision to remove the title. It stated that the title "Patriarch of the West" had become "obsolete and practically unusable" when the term the West comprises Australia, New Zealand and North America in addition to Western Europe, and that it was "pointless to insist on maintaining it" given that, since the Second Vatican Council, the Latin Church, for which "the West" is an equivalent, has been organized as a number of episcopal conferences and their international groupings. The title was reintroduced in the 2024 edition of Annuario Pontificio. No explanation was provided for its reintroduction.

As the "Patriarch of the West", the pope issues the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church. During the Synod of Bishops on the Middle East in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appeared, as patriarch of the Latin Church, with the other patriarchs, but without the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, though he was present at the same synod.

Eastern Orthodox

 * The five ancient Patriarchates, the Pentarchy, listed in order of preeminence ranked by the Quinisext Council in 692:

 * The five junior Patriarchates created after the consolidation of the Pentarchy, in chronological order of their recognition as Patriarchates by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople:

Church of the East
Catholicose of the East is the title that has been held by the ecclesiastical heads of the Church of the East, the Grand Metropolitan of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, since AD. 280.

It refers to Patriarchs of the Church of the East, primate (Catholicos-Patriarch) of the Church of the East now divided into:
 * Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East.
 * Catholicos-Patriarchs of the Ancient Church of the East (since 1964)

Other Christian denominations
The title of "Patriarch" is assumed also by the leaders of certain Christian denominations, who are seldom in communion with none of the historic Christian Churches. Many, but not necessarily all such patriarchs are church leaders of the following Churches:

 * Hussite
 * The Patriarch of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church mainly in the Czech Republic and also some parts of Slovakia.

 * Independent Catholic
 * The Patriarch of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch.
 * The Patriarch Juan Almario E.M. Calampiano of the Apostolic Catholic Church in the Philippines.
 * The Patriarch of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church in Brazil (Not officially used, but described in a similarly holy level).
 * Patriarch Dr. +John Paul Hozvicka "Servant of Christ Jesus of the Catholic Faith" United States
 * The Patriarch of the Venezuelan Catholic Apostolic Church in Venezuela.

 * Independent Eastern Catholic
 * The Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.

 * Independent Eastern Orthodox
 * The Patriarch of the American Orthodox Catholic Church.

 * Independent Oriental Orthodox
 * The Patriarch of the British Orthodox Church.

 * Protestant
 * The Patriarch of the International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church.

 * Latter Day Saint movement

In the Latter Day Saint movement, a patriarch is one who has been ordained to the office of patriarch in the Melchizedek priesthood. The term is considered synonymous with the term evangelist, a term favored by the Community of Christ. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the patriarch's primary responsibilities is to give patriarchal blessings, as Jacob did to his twelve sons according to the Old Testament. Patriarchs are typically assigned in each stake and possess the title for life.

Manichaeism
The term patriarch has also been used for the leader of the extinct Manichaean religion, initially based at Ctesiphon (near modern-day Baghdad) and later at Samarkand.

title: Patriarch


text:
James Payn

James Payn (28 February 1830 – 25 March 1898) was an English novelist and editor. Among the periodicals he edited were Chambers's Journal in Edinburgh and the Cornhill Magazine in London.

Family
Payn's father, William Payn (1774/1775–1840), was clerk to the Thames Commissioners, and at one time treasurer to the county of Berkshire. Payn was educated at Eton and then entered the Military Academy at Woolwich, but his health was unequal to a military career and he proceeded in 1847 to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he was among the most popular men and served as president of the Union. Before going to Cambridge he had published some verses in Leigh Hunt's Journal, and while still an undergraduate put out a volume of Stories from Boccaccio in 1852 and one of Poems in 1853.

In the year Payn left Cambridge, he met and soon married Miss Louisa Adelaide Edlin (born 1830 or 1831), sister of Judge Sir Peter Edlin, later chairman of the London Quarter Sessions. They had nine children, the third of whom, Alicia Isabel (died 1898), married The Times editor George Earle Buckle.

Editor and novelist
Payn then settled down in the Lake District to a literary career and contributed regularly to Household Words and Chambers's Journal. In 1858 he moved to Edinburgh to act as joint editor of the latter, and became its sole editor in 1860 with much success for 15 years. Meanwhile he moved to London in 1861. In the Journal he published in 1864 his most popular story, Lost Sir Massingberd. Thereafter he was engaged in writing novels, including Richard Arbour or the Family Scapegrace (1861), Married Beneath Him (1865), Carlyon's Year (1868), A County Family (1869), By Proxy (1878), A Confidential Agent (1880), Thicker Than Water (1883), The Canon's Ward (1883), A Grape from a Thorn, The Talk of the Town (1885), and The Heir of the Ages (1886).

In 1883 Payn succeeded Leslie Stephen as editor of the Cornhill Magazine and continued there until his health broke down in 1896. He was also literary adviser to Messrs Smith, Elder & Company. His publications included a Handbook to the English Lakes (1859), and various volumes of essays: Maxims by a Man of the World (1869), Some Private Views (1881), Some Literary Recollections (1884). His posthumous work The Backwater of Life (1899) revealed much of his personality through kindly, sensible reflections on familiar topics. He died in London on 25 March 1898. A biographical introduction to The Backwater of Life was provided by Sir Leslie Stephen.

Works
Articles
 * "The Critic on the Hearth", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. V, January/June 1879.
 * "An Indo-Anglian Poet", The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. CCXLVI, January/June 1880.
 * "Two Infant Phenomenons", The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. CCXLVI, January/June 1880.
 * "Sham Admiration in Literature", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. VII, January/June 1880.
 * "The Pinch of Poverty", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. VII, January/June 1880.
 * "Success in Fiction", The North American Review, Vol. 140, No. 342, May 1885.
 * "On Conversation", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. XLII, July/December 1897.
 * "On Old Age", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. XLII, July/December 1897.

Short stories
 * "The Midway Inn", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. V, January/June 1879.
 * "Uncle Lock's Legacy", Short Stories, Vol. XI, September/December 1892.
 * "A Successful Experiment", Short Stories, Vol. XI, September/December 1892.
 * "Rebecca's Remorse". In Short Stories from "Black and White", Chapman & Hall, 1893.
 * "A Faithful Retainer". In Stories by English Authors, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901.

Novels
 * Lost Sir Massingberd, 1864.
 * Married Beneath Him, 1865.
 * Lights and Shadows of London Life, 1867.
 * Bentinck's Tutor, One of the Family, 1868.
 * Blondel Parva, 1868.
 * Not Wooed, But Won, 1871.
 * Walter's Word, 1875.
 * Fallen Fortunes, 1876.
 * What He Cost Her, 1877.
 * By Proxy, 1878.
 * Less Black Than We're Painted, 1878.
 * The Canon's Ward, 1884.
 * The Luck of the Darrells, 1885.
 * The Talk of the Town, 1885.
 * The Heir of the Ages, 1886.
 * The Burnt Million, 1890.
 * A Stumble on the Threshold, 1892.
 * The Disappearance of George Driffell, 1896.

Non-fiction
 * Some Literary Recollections, 1884.

title: James Payn