The meet and greet event will take place at the wonderful Hermitage Museum, a unique, historic building in the Center of Amsterdam.
The Amstelhof, as the museum was called before, is one of the finest examples of monumental classicist architecture in Amsterdam. It was built in 1681-1683 as a home for the elderly in need of care (initially only for women, but also for men from 1719).
The site was bounded by the River Amstel, Nieuwe Herengracht, Weesperstraat and Nieuwe Keizersgracht. Thanks to a substantial legacy, it proved possible to complete the monumental building on the Amstel in less than two years, probably to a design by the city architect Hans Petersom. It comprised a basement, two floors and an attic and is laid out as a square around a spacious garden that was originally intended to be a bleaching ground. This was flanked by two narrow courtyards which were covered over and built on in the 19th century.
The two stone gates in the façade on the Amstel side were once the entrances to the complex. The decorated door with steps in the middle of the façade has a purely aesthetic function, opening on to the middle of the dining room or chapel directly behind the façade. Parts of the old interior survive only in the basement, including the 18th-century kitchen (restored in 1979) with a deep fireplace and gigantic cooking pots with brick surrounds in which the food for about 700 residents was prepared.
After various renovations in the 19th and 20th centuries, little is left of the original interior of the Amstelhof.
The event will start on Monday, June 26 at 08.30 p.m. The Hermitage Exhibition: “1917 Romanov & Revolution – the end of Monarchy” will be exclusively opened for the EAN, as well as guides will be happy to answer all your questions. This unique exhibition will be the only showing of the exhibition in Western Europe. It includes over 250 items from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and the Artillery Museum in St Petersburg. Using films, photographs, paintings, objects d’art and historical documents, the show tells the gripping story of fashionable St Petersburg and the art that flourished there in the early twentieth century, of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra, and of the explosive political and social circumstances of their reign. Visitors see and hear how choices and decisions made by the tsar made revolution inevitable and spelled the inescapable end of the 300-year Romanov monarchy in Russia. They also gain moving intimate insights into the final years of the imperial family, ending in their murder. 1917: the ultimate turning point in the history of Russia. The last tsar and the revolution, on exclusive show in Amsterdam a century after the event. Top exhibits will include items from the imperial couple’s wardrobe, portraits of the royal pair, their children’s toys and drawings, Nicholas’s Act of Abdication (facsimile), works of art created at the period (Russia’s ‘Silver Age’), various Fabergé objects and one of the murder weapons.
There is the option for a boat taxi from Strand Zuid at 08.15 p.m. for all participants of the Satellite Symposia that will end at 08.00p.m.
The entrance fee is € 35 (reduced fee € 25) and includes free snacks and drinks, the entrance to the museum and free guiding in the exhibition, as well as the option to use the boat to get to the Hermitage Museum (limited space available).
Location: Hermitage Museum Amsterdam, Amstel 51, 1018 EJ Amsterdam, Netherlands
