The Kunstkammer or Kunstkamera was the first museum in Russia. It was established by Peter the Great on the Neva Riverfront facing the Winter Palace. The turreted Petrine Baroque building of the Kunstkamera was completed by 1727.
Peter's museum was dedicated to preserving "natural and human curiosities and rarities". The tsar's personal collection, originally stored in the Summer Palace, features a large assortment of human and animal fetuses with anatomical deficiencies, which ...
» more