Russian Pancake Week, Russian Traditions

"Maslenitsa" is the Russian name of this holiday. It is usually celebrated during the last week before the Great Lent. Is is clearly one of the merriest feasts in Russia. Originally it was a pagan rite to celebrate the end of winter.

According to an old custom it is necessary to please Maslenitsa by all means. One of the best ways is to make and eat pancakes symbolyzing the sun. In old times, during the Pancake Week people would enatertain themselves by going tobogganing and skating, arranging snow-ball fights, storming snow fotresses.

Maslenitsa has always been a young people's holiday. Therefore, it's associated with youth and cheerfulness and marks the beginning of spring.

Nowadays the celebrations of Maslenitsa are accompanied by concerts, different contests, traditional games and ends with the symbolic ritual of burning the

stuffed figure of winter. 

While on the Hermitage tour don't miss the opportunity to see the Pancake Woman by Rembrandt

Surikov "The Taking of a Snow Fortress"

Discover remarkable French paintings of the 19th-20th centuries which nobody has ever seen before on your Hermitage museum tour. They come from German private collections and only few people managed to see them exhibited. During the World War II they were hidden and then taken to the Soviet Union. In 1950 most of them were transferred back to Germany. Today the Hermitage puts on display only some of the items taken from closed Soviet deposits. For a very long time the exhibiting of these paintings was forbidden.

The regime of the country changed and with the help of The Ministry of Culture of Russia the Hermitage has an opportunity to showcase them. Though the fate of these masterpieces is not decided yet... Dozens of works by such great masters as Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, and others were out of sight during the time when impressionism and post-impressionism were of great interest.

The Hermitage has more fans in social networks than the Louvre

Tours in Saint-Petersburg, December 2012. The Hermitage museum is more popular than the French

Louvre in social networks, stated the head of the Hermitage Museum in Saint-Petersburg Mikhail

Piotrovsky.

According to the director of the museum Piotrovsky, the number of registered users in social

networks is one of the defining criteria of popularity in the society. "Three days ago we had more

visitors than the Louvre, it's very nice," said Piotrovsky.

Works on the recreation of the Saviour Church on Sennaya Square (the

Assumption church of the Mother of God) in St. Petersburg are scheduled for 2014,

stated the Chairman of the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of

Historical and Cultural Landmarks. It’s also considered to be the most important

architectural event. The recreation of the lost church will begin from the basement.

In 2011 there began an active development of the project of the Assumption

church on Sennaya Square.