Winter Palace of Peter the Great

Hidden beneath the later Hermitage Theatre are the surviving lower rooms of an early winter residence of Peter the Great, rediscovered and opened as a museum in the twentieth century. Visitors descend to see reconstructed chambers, courtyard walls and the tsar's study, along with a life-size wax effigy and personal objects that evoke the founder of the city. The excavated brickwork reveals how the modest early palace was later engulfed by grander construction.