The Fabergé Museum opened in 2013 in the Naryshkin-Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka embankment, after seven years of restoration returned the mansion to its historic appearance. The collection is built on the Fabergé holdings of the American publisher Malcolm Forbes: in 2004 it was bought whole, before it could be broken up at auction, and brought back to Russia. The museum now holds more than four thousand pieces of Russian jewellery and decorative art.
Over two hours you pass through eleven rooms of the palace — the Knights’ Hall, the Red, Blue and Gold drawing rooms, the Gothic Room — and see the world’s foremost collection of work by the House of Fabergé.
The Easter eggs — fourteen eggs by the House of Fabergé, nine of them imperial. Among them is the first, the Hen Egg of 1885, which began the custom of imperial Easter gifts, and the Coronation Egg, the best known of them all. The Kelch family eggs and the Duchess of Marlborough Egg are here too.
Jeweller’s fantasies — objets de fantaisie and objets de vertu: cigarette cases, frames, clocks, figurines in coloured stone, the miniature luxury that brought all the courts of Europe to Fabergé.
Russian silver and church art — decorative table silver and liturgical objects made in the firm’s workshops.
Fabergé’s rivals — work by the houses of Sazikov, Ovchinnikov and Khlebnikov and the Rückert workshop: a chance to compare the finest jewellers of St Petersburg and Moscow, and to see what set Fabergé above them.
Paintings and icons — Aivazovsky, Bryullov, Makovsky, Polenov, Renoir, and a collection of Russian icons in the Gothic Room.
Objects behind glass do not tell their own stories. How a young jeweller won the favour of Alexander III and received his first imperial commission. What surprises are hidden inside Alexandra Feodorovna’s Easter gifts, and which events in the family’s life each one marked. What remains unexplained about Alexander III’s last Easter present. And why the fate of the collection after 1917 is a detective story a century long.
The tour is private: your guide works with your party alone and shapes the account around what interests you — the jeweller’s craft, the history of the imperial family, or the palace itself and the people who owned it.
The Fabergé Museum
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 1 | $240 |
| 2 | $119 |
| 3 | $83 |
| 4 | $65 |
| 5 | $55 |
| 6 | $49 |
| 7 | $45 |
| 8 | $41 |
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 9 | $39 |
| 10 | $37 |
| 11 | $35 |
| 12 | $34 |
| 13 | $33 |
| 14 | $32 |
| 15 | $31 |
| 16 | $30 |
Jewish St Petersburg: the Grand Choral Synagogue in the Moorish style, the history of the community in the imperial capital, its bankers and philanthropists — and how it lives today.
The essentials of St Petersburg in three hours: Palace and Senate squares, the Summer Garden and the Field of Mars, the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island and the place the city began — told through stories rather than dates.
An hour along the rivers and canals with your own guide: the Venice of the North from the water, the bridges and their superstitions, Chizhik-Pyzhik, and the floods that reshaped the city.
On foot through the imperial capital: Palace Square, Nevsky Prospect and Gostiny Dvor, the well-yards behind the grand facades, and doughnuts in a historic cafe — two hours through the heart of St Petersburg.