Infinite art collections

All art enthusiasts will find there’s never enough time in Russia. You're in for a surprise if the only things that come to mind when you think of Russian art are those tiny nesting dolls (matryoshka dolls) and churches with onion-domed roofs. Russian art is just as varied and fascinating as that of other countries. This is definitely one of the reasons to visit Russia.

One of Russian art's most significant contributions to world civilization emerged very early. After Russia converted to Christianity from a pagan religion in the year 988, its artists quickly rose to the top of the iconoclastic art style. No, this is not referring to the tiny file folder images on your desktop. Icons of religion are pictures of important people like Jesus Christ and Christian saints. Other icons show incidents like the birth of Christ or saintly miracles.

More than 180,000 exclusively Russian works of art from the 11th to the 20th centuries are on display at the State Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow. The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg contains more than 3 million works of art and antiquities, and you can be guaranteed to see the most well-known of them all there: Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son.