The museum first expanded outside of Russia in 2000, opening a branch in London's Somerset House and another one a year later, in Las Vegas at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.
Both locations were later closed and replaced with new affiliates in Ferrara, Italy and in Amsterdam, the favorite city of Peter the Great.
The Hermitage Amsterdam opened in 2004 and was initially located in a small building on the Nieuwe Herengracht. It operated here from 2007 to 2009, waile awaiting the renovation of the larger Amstelhof building, where it moved in June 2009. The opening ceremony was held by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Since then, the Hermitage Amsterdam welcomed over three million visitors and has become one of the most visited museums in Holland.
In 2006, the Hermitage decided to launch a branch in Italy. Several northern cities such as Verona, Mantua and Turin expressed their desire to host the satellite museum, but the honor was eventually awarded to the city of Ferrara, where a museum was opened in 2007 in the castle of the Dukes of D'Este. However, the European expansion of the Hermitage did not stop only there.
In 2012, the Government of Catalonia confirmed their intention to establish a Hermitage-Barcelona museum center, due to open in 2015. There also have been recent proposals to open a branch in Lithuania under the title of the Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum. Following the example of the former Las Vegas affiliate, the gallery will combine artworks from the St. Petersburg Hermitage with works from the New York Guggenheim Museum.
The Hermitage has not forgetten about its visitors back home either. On its 250th anniversary, the museum announced plans to open new satellite extensions by 2016 in several major Russian cities such as Vladivostok, Omsk, Ekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don and possibly even Kaliningrad and Moscow. While we are waiting for this to happen, you can always visit the well established branches in Kazan and Vyborg, where some of the Hermitage's treasures are displayed.
