Ermitazh. Istoriia Stroitel’stva I Arkhitektura Zdanii

Leningrad: Stroiizdat, 1989. First edition; folio 10 x 13 ½; pp. [9], 8-560; blue cloth over boards; silver title; pictorial DJ; very minor wear (small discolored spot to fore-edge, else fine); jacket with a few small nicks and chips to edges – very good or better. Illustrated with full-page color plates including large fold-out, and b & w in-line drawings and illustrations. Captions in Russian and English. A wonderful work on the history of the Hermitage and its architecture. Once home of the tsars and currently one of the oldest museums in existence, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great, the Hermitage houses the largest collection of paintings in the world. In 1941, when Hitler ordered the complete annihilation of Saint Petersburg, hundreds of museum employees as well as concerned citizens poured into the Hermitage, packed and crated the priceless collections, and evacuated them to Sverdlovsk (present day Yekaterinburg) thus saving more than a million objects of art.