On 31 May 2019, the Hermitage Theatre was the venue for the opening ceremony and plenary session of the 12th International Peter the Great Congress organized by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Dmitry Likhachev Foundation, the Peter the Great Institute and a number of other institutions and organizations.
In 2019 this annual conference is devoted to “The Image of Peter the Great in World Culture”. For the Hermitage with its extremely rich collection of items from the Petrine era, on the basis of which several permanent displays and a large number of temporary exhibitions have been created in the museum and outside, the study of Peter the Great’s time is a field that is always important and relevant.
The plenary session was opened by the General Director of the State Hermitage, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, who reminded the congress of the Hermitage’s contribution to the study of Peter’s personality and activities in the context of world culture and in particular the large-scale exhibition “Peter the Great. A Tsar in France” held at Versailles in 2017. Alla Manilova, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, read out greetings to the Peter the Great Congress from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and spoke about the plan of events for the celebration of the 350th anniversary of Peter I’s birth. Greetings from the Acting Governor of St Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, were read by Liubov Sovershayeva. At the end of the formal part of the session, Alexander Kobak, the chairman of the board of the Peter the Great Institute and Director of the Likhachev Foundation, reminded people of the history of the Peter the Great Congress and spoke about plans for the future.
The papers presented during the plenary session were devoted to the history of the study of the Petrine era and the image of Peter in various forms of art and literature.
