The State Russian Museum is home of the world's largest collection of Russian fine art. The museum is housed in four palaces located in the historical center of St. Petersburg. Together, these buildings present a retrospective panorama of Russian architecture - Baroque (Stroganov Palace), early and late Neoclassicism (Marble Palace, St. Michael's Palace).
The collection of Russian Museum currently numbers some 400000 works of art. It covers practically all the main movements and styles in art and all Russian schools over a period of a thousand years, from the tenth to the twentieth centuries.
From Nevsky Prospect - The central magistral of St. Petersburg - you can enjoy the image of beautiful building, both monumental and light, with gracious portico of classic Corinthis order. Here, on the Art Square, in the Former Palace of Grand Duke Michail Pavlovich ( "Mikhailovsky Palace") are displaced the main compositions and founds of museum.
If you walk from the main building up to the Nevsky Prospect and then turn to the right, you can see the plastic front of the oldest Stroganov Palace, named after its owners, the Stroganov famile.
Then you can have a wonderful trip upon embankment of the Moika river. When you come to the Mars Square, you can see to the left the Marble Palace, built in the late Neoclassicism style. And to the right you can see the romantic silhouette of St. Michael's (Engineers) Castle.
The Stroganov Palace, Marble Palace and St.Michael's Castle were awarded to Russian Museum between 1989 and 1994. All three buildings were then in need of urgent repairs. The already restored rooms of the palaces are now home to both permanent and temporary exhibitions. Further restoration restoration work on these unique monuments of Russian architecture is currently underway.