Daily Itinerary:
August 25 to September 6, 2019 

 

· Day 1,   Sunday August 25, Depart USA for
                Moscow

· Day 2,   Arrive Moscow, August 26
· Day 3,   Moscow, August 27
· Day 4,   Moscow, August 28
· Day 5,   Moscow, August 29
· Day 6,   Sergiev Posad to Suzdal August 30
· Day 7,   Suzdal August 31
· Day 8,   Vladimir to St. Petersburg September 1
· Day 9,   St. Petersburg September 2
· Day 10, St. Petersburg September 3
· Day 11, St. Petersburg September 4

  Day 12, St. Petersburg September 5

· Day 13, St. Petersburg September 6
                     Depart Arrive USA

Highlight St. Petersburg: Catherine Palace

MOSCOW- 4 Nights, August 26 - 29

Patriarch's Palace  - One of the rare examples of civil architecture of the Patriarch Nikon's times. Nowadays, the Cross Chamber, the Front Anteroom, the refectory and the Twelve Apostles' Church house the museum. It presents valuable items of history and culture of the XVII century- personals of patriarchs, precious table wares, pocket-watches and table-clocks, unique examples of ecclesiastical embroidery and interiors, manuscripts and printed books, icons painted by famous Tsar's isografs (icon-painters). 

Red Square, Lenin's Mausoleum, Cathedral of Christ the Savior 

State Tretykov Gallery

The Tretyakov Gallery holds the greatest collection of Russian art in the world. Founded by 19th-century Russian merchant, Pavel Tretyakov, who spent 40 years and much of his fortune collecting and preserving works of Russian art. The history and trajectory of Russian art are displayed here, encompassing pieces from the 11th century to the present. The Tretykov is renowned for its collection of famous Russian icons and masterpieces by Russia's artistic geniuses, including Repin, Vrubel, Kandinsky, Malevich, Levitan and others. The original Tretyakov Gallery houses a collection of Russian art that dates to the end of the 19th century. The New Tretyakov Gallery contains works of 20th century Russian artists. The collection is rarely seen outside of Russia.

On the steps of the Pushkin Museum

 

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art's collection consists of over 500,000 works, making it one of the largest museums in the world, second after the Hermitage Museum. The museum has a wide variety of artwork, but it is most known for having one of the most expensive collections in the world of 19th and 20th century European art. On display at the Pushkin are masterpieces by Perugino and Botticelli, Cranach and Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck, Ribera and Murillo, Poussin and Watteau, Constable and David. There is a world-famous collection of French paintings from the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, containing major works by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. This collection was amassed through both appropriation and donation. One of the main reasons for this incredible collection is due largely from the efforts of one woman, Irina Antonoa, the Museum's Director for the last 46 years. Irina has navigated her way through Russia's social elite to secure numerous private collections.

One private collection that was appropriated after the revolution of 1917, due to a legal decree signed by Lenin, was the collection of Sergi Shchukin. Irina Antonova once remarked about Shchukin: "He started to collect unpopular art, which was snubbed by the Louvre and other museums. It was his personal taste. Perhaps he heard foreshocks that would change the world. Such a collector could appear only in a country that awaited a revolution. He collected art that prefigured the global cataclysms."

    

Sergi Shchukin because was a major patron to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. It was Shchukin who encouraged Matisse to change his style in the early 1900s. Shchukin commissioned Matisse to paint two paintings of dancers for the foyer of his home in Moscow. He then waited for four years as Matisse struggled to develop a new style upon which to paint his now famous "The Dance." Shchukin received the paintings in 1910, then in 1918 he fled Moscow to save his life as Lenin stole his collection. At that time the paintings in his home were stacked from the ceiling to the floor. Shchukin lost to the Pushkin Museum -- 37 Matisse's, 16 Gauguin's, 8 Cezanne's, 50 Picasso's, 16 Duran's, and 4 Van Gogh's. His collection of Picasso's paintings featured choice works including most of his earliest Cubist works, such as Three Women and major landscapes, and some key pieces of his Blue and Rose periods.

There are works at the Pushkin Museum whose legitimacy of ownership is disputed. During World War II, Germany bombed the Museum completely, destroying the ceiling throughout the entire structure. After the war for "cultural restitution," Russia emptied out the Dresden Gallery and appropriated works from other German museums.

    

St. Petersburg  Highlights:

 

Corinthia Hotel located on Nevsky Prospect, Church of our Savior on Spilled Blood, Russian Museum, Hermitage (Winter Palace), St. Isaac's Cathedral, Catherine's Summer Palace, Ballet, Peterhoof Palace, Repin Academy, Ysupov Palace, Fabergé Musuem, Peter and Paul Fortress, canal cruise, Nevsky Prospect

Video Highlights of St. Petersburg

Boat tours of the city's rivers and canals offer a different and very popular way to experience St. Petersburg. The city of St. Petersburg is made up of over 40 islands with more than 70 rivers and canals running through its territory. In the early years of St. Petersburg, the city dwellers made their way around the city by these waterways, as was planned by the city's founder, Peter the Great. The first stone mansions of the Russian nobility appeared along the waterways and still offer a unique glimpse at the history of Russia's naval capital.
  

This tour in will give you an overview of some of this spectacular city's must-see sights. During the tour, your guide will tell you about the buildings and monuments you are passing, and will also provide an historic outlook. After all, the city originated on the water, so naturally its history is best explained from the waters of its rivers and canals!
  

The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood

Interior of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

A temporary shrine was erected on the site of the attack while the project for a more permanent memorial was undertaken. It was decided that the section of the street where the assassination took place was to be enclosed within the walls of a church. That section of the embankment was therefore extended out into the canal to allow the shrine to fit comfortably within the building and to provide space on the exterior wall for a memorial marking the spot where the assassination took place. Inside, an elaborate shrine was constructed on the exact place of Alexander's death, garnished with topaz, lazurite and other semi-precious stones. Amid such rich decoration, the simple cobblestones on which the tsar's blood was spilled and which are exposed in the floor of the shrine provide a striking contrast.
 

Architecturally, the Cathedral differs from St. Petersburg's other structures. The city's architecture is predominantly Baroque and Neoclassical, but the Savior on Blood harks back to medieval Russian architecture in the spirit of romantic nationalism. It intentionally resembles the 17th-century Yaroslavl churches and the celebrated St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
 

The Church contains over 7500 square meters of mosaics - according to its restorers, more than any other church in the world. The interior was designed by some of the most celebrated Russian artists of the day-including Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov and Mikhail Vrubel. The walls and ceilings inside the Church are completely covered in intricately detailed mosaics - the main pictures being biblical scenes or figures - but with very fine patterned borders setting off each picture. 

  

The State Russian Museum, the largest museum of Russian art in the world, housing works by famous artists such as Nicolai Fechin, Valentin Serov, Ilya Repin, Konstantin Makovsky, Philipp Malyavin, and Isaak Levitan to name a few. This museum has collected the crème de la crème of master works by Russian artists, ranging from historic to contemporary times. Additionally, it has gained a reputation of world importance due to its outstanding collection of not only Russian figurative painting, but also Russian Impressionism. We may think of museums like the Hermitage and the Tretyakov as being so large you need days and days to explore them, but the Russian Museum is so huge it fills three palaces and a castle!  
 

Upon the enthronement of Nicholas II, the State Russian Museum was established in 1895 to commemorate his father, Alexander III. The original collection consisted of 80 canvases from the Hermitage collection, 120 from the Academy of Fine Arts and 200 from various royal palaces. So many pieces of art were donated to the Russian Museum after 1898 that the additional Benois Building was constructed in 1914-16 to house the growing collection of the museum. After the revolution of 1917 the collection of the Russian Museum grew quickly due to "nationalization" or "requisition" of art from numerous private collections.

 

"State Council", 1901 by Ilya Repin

During its early years, the museum was managed by The Academy of Fine Arts, who intentionally collected works by the masters and their protégés. This makes it an absolutely outstanding place to study Russian Figurative art and Russian Impressionism.

The main building of the museum is the Mikhailovsky Palace, a splendid Neoclassical residence of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, erected in 1819-25 on the Square of Arts in St. Petersburg. Upon the death of the Grand Duke the residence was named after his wife as the Palace of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and became famous for its many theatrical presentations and balls. Some of the halls of the palace retain the Italianate opulent interiors of the former imperial residence.

On display at the Russian Museum is art spanning from the early Russian icons all the way through to early 20th century paintings. Displayed at Mikhailovsky Palace are excellent Russian icons, including some by Andrey Rublyov, portraits by Rokotov, Levitsky, Borovikovsky and Shubin, works by Brullov, Bruni and Ivanov, seascapes by Aivazovsky, historical paintings and portraits by Surikov and Repin, landscapes by Kuingi and Levitan, paintings by Vasnetsov, Korovin, Vrubel, Nesterov, Benois, Somov, Dobuzhinsky, Bakst, Serov, sculptures by Trubetskoy, Grabar, Serebryakova, Kustodiev, Rerikh and many others. Today the unique and comprehensive collection of the Russian Museum affords an exceptional opportunity for an all-around, detailed study of the development of artistic ideas and culture in Russia over a period of nearly two and a half centuries.

  

   

The Department of Contemporary Art was opened at the Russian Museum in the late 1980s. The department collects and exhibits new and often unconventional art forms - installations, objects, assemblages, video art, photography and photo-based art. Many works find their way into the collection directly from exhibitions. The first major acquisition was in 1990, following the Territory of Art show curated by the Russian Museum in collaboration with the Institut des Hautes Etudes et Arts Plastiques.
 

The Russian Museum not only displays modern art; it also plays a fundamental role in the contemporary art process. The museum has always aimed to be in the thick of events, reflecting the diversity of modern art in its own collection. One of the main tasks of the Russian Museum now is to fill in the gaps still existing in its collection, acquiring works that were either banned or officially frowned upon during the Soviet period.

 

State Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace) & Palace Square

  

View onto Palace Square from the Hermitage

In 2014 the Hermitage Museum, formerly the Winter Palace of the Czars, celebrated 250 years of existence. A new wing of the museum has opened consisting of 800 rooms all dedicated to the art from the 19th to 21st centuries. The opening of this behemoth new wing will make the Hermitage the largest museum in the world.
 

The Hermitage is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. It was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. When you first enter you are overcome by a great feeling of joy. The building itself is a work of art, a combination of Baroque and Rococo styles, its decorated throughout with statuary and opulent stucco work. It is a place where great artists like Valentin Serov and Ilya Repin came to study. Its collections, of which only a small part are on permanent display, comprise nearly three million items including the largest collection of paintings in the world.

 

The importance of a visit to this museum to an artist or lover of art really cannot be measured. There is a room dedicated to Rembrandt where you can see the evolution of his career. Another room dedicated to Monet, and yet another to Kandinsky. The last painting Van Gogh ever painted, Thatched Cottages, is also found on display. There are paintings by Picasso and Matisse that I never knew existed. Every major school of art is represented here. The collection of Western European art at the Hermitage is regarded as one of the finest in the world, and forms the nucleus of the Hermitage display. It occupies 120 rooms in the four museum buildings, and reflects all the stages in the development of art from the Middle Ages to the present day. The collection includes numerous works by outstanding masters from Italy, Spain, Holland, Flanders, France, England, Germany, and other Western European countries.

The Hermitage Museum / Winter Palace

  

Lost inside the Hermitage

Out of six buildings of the main museum complex, four, namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage and New Hermitage, are partially open to the public. The Winter Palace is the former home of the Tsars. The palace's art collection was originally assembled haphazardly in an eclectic manner by Catherine the Great. Many of the artworks purchased for the palace arrived as whole ready-assembled collections. The Tsaritsa's ambassadors in Rome, Paris, Amsterdam and London were instructed to look out for and purchase thousands of priceless works of art on her behalf. In this way, Catherine the Great acquired major European collections including works by such masters as Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Raphael, and van Dyck. While some aspects of this imposing collecting could have been a manifestation of Catherine's desire for the recognition of her intellectual concepts, there was also a more fundamental motivation. Just twenty years earlier, so scarce were the furnishings of the Imperial palaces that bedsteads, mirrors, tables and chairs had to be conveyed between Moscow and Saint Petersburg each time the court moved.

 

Up close with Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta, 1490-91

  

 

Igor Nazareitchouk was born and raised in S t. Petersburg where he current ly resides. He is one of the pioneers in bringing Russian fine art to collectors outside of Russia. For the past 25 years Igor has been traveling all over Russia discovering great art and working with some of the greatest Russian artists (and their families) of the twentieth century. Igor has hosted numerous clients on visits to Russia and had guided several tours.  He brings outstanding hospitality to the tour and has a reputation as being each guests personal concierge.