International Museum Day

International Museum Day is celebrated annually across 42 European countries, and St Petersburg is joining in wholeheartedly again this year, with museums across the city opening their doors throughout the night to allow for a completely new museum experience!
Not only do you get the chance to see the museums in a totally different light (well, dark…), each museum is hosting a different event or exhibition, a one-off show especially for International Museum Day. As with every year, there is a theme: for 2014 it’s “Light and Colour”.
It’s not just museums that are open either – the zoo will be open all night long too!
To access all the museums you just need one ticket, costing 350p, that you can buy in any of the museums on the day, or if you just fancy attending one event, you can buy single entry tickets at the specific museums.
96 venues will be open for most, if not all, of the night and you can find the programme of events in today’s Metro newspaper and also in the St Petersburg Times, published on Wednesday.
Some things to look forward to include:
- A backstage discovery tour at the Baltiisky Dom Theatre,
- an exhibition of military vehicles and Red Army weapons at the Museum of the Defence and the Siege of Leningrad,
- the opportunity to stargaze at the planetarium,
- a 9pm concert at the St Isaac’s Cathedral and
- a military drill at the Priory Palace by knights from Malta!
There are many, many more events planned, so make sure you check out the full programme in the newspapers and online.
The Museum Night website can help you plan the best route to see as much as possible and shows you the current most popular venues.
To help with transport, the metro will be open all night long as well and there will be special night buses operating from midnight to 6am.