Fabergé Museum, St Petersburg

Fabergé Museum tickets and prices

A standard ticket is 700 ₽, roughly the price of a coffee and a pastry on Nevsky. Schoolchildren and full-time university students pay 350 ₽ whatever their nationality — bring your student card. Children under 7 go free. Other discounts and free categories (pensioners, families, veterans) are for Russian and Belarusian citizens.

The ticket desk only sells same-day tickets, and entry is mainly by online ticket. You can book ahead on the museum’s official website — its English version has a “Buy ticket” link to the museum’s own box office.

About paying: Visa and Mastercard cards issued outside Russia have not worked there since March 2022, so a foreign card will be declined both online and at the desk. Carry roubles in cash or ask your hotel or a tour operator to book for you.

Temporary exhibitions are ticketed separately. The permanent collection — the eggs — is what you’re here for.

Fabergé Museum opening hours

The museum is open daily from 10:00 to 20:45, with no weekly closing day. The ticket desk opens at 9:30 and closes at 20:15; ticket sales and entry stop 30 minutes before closing, and the exhibition rooms start closing 15 minutes before the end of the day.

Weekday mornings right at 10:00 and evenings after 18:00 are the quietest. The rooms are intimate, and the Blue Room with the imperial eggs fills up fast when a tour group arrives.

How many Fabergé eggs are in the museum?

The collection holds nine imperial Easter eggs, made by the House of Fabergé for the last two tsars, Alexander III and Nicholas II, as gifts to the empresses. Most came in 2004, when Viktor Vekselberg bought the Forbes family’s Fabergé collection in one deal. Alongside them are eggs made for private clients such as the Kelch family and the Duchess of Marlborough.

One caveat: the Hen egg of 1885, the very first imperial egg, was lent to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 2021–22 and, according to The Art Newspaper and Russian Wikipedia, stayed in the UK after sanctions were imposed on Vekselberg. We found no reliable report of its return, so you may see eight imperial eggs rather than nine.

For scale: Moscow’s Kremlin Armoury has ten, the largest single group. This is the biggest in St Petersburg.

What to see inside

• The Blue Room — the heart of the museum, with the imperial eggs: the Hen, Renaissance, the Coronation egg of 1897 and the Order of St George egg of 1916.
• The State Staircase from the 1840s, under its painted dome — where the visit starts.
• The Knights’ Hall — military watercolours, porcelain and silver.
• The Red Room — Russian silver from the 18th to the early 20th century, by Fabergé and rival court suppliers.
• The Gold Room — imperial presentation gifts, gold snuffboxes with tsars’ portraits and Fabergé’s hardstone flowers and animals.
• The Gothic Hall — Russian icons from the 16th to the 20th century, many in jewelled covers.
• The Exhibition Hall and Upper Buffet — carved stone figures and paintings, including Renoir and Korovin.
• The White Column Hall — the palace’s old ballroom, now used for exhibitions and concerts.

Is the Fabergé Museum worth it?

Yes, if you have more than a day in the city. For 700 ₽ and 90 minutes you get a world-class jewellery collection in a beautifully restored palace, without the miles of corridors at the Hermitage. It also works in bad weather and on Mondays.

Skip it on a one-day visit if you haven’t done the Hermitage or St Isaac’s Cathedral yet. And don’t expect a huge museum: it fits on one floor, and the highlight is a single room.

Take the English audio guide or a guided tour. Without the stories — what surprise hid inside each egg, who gave it to whom and why — the eggs are just very shiny objects behind glass.

English audio guide and guided tours

The audio guide costs 300 ₽ and comes in eight languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Korean and Chinese. The online version plays on your phone: pay on the audio-guide site, get a code, and it works only on that day. Bring earphones.

The museum’s own “Masterpieces of the Fabergé Museum” session costs 1,300 ₽, lasts 60 minutes and takes up to 15 people. The official site doesn’t state the language, so assume Russian unless told otherwise. For a tour in English, book a private guide through a YesGo partner.

The Shuvalov Palace

The museum fills the Naryshkin-Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka. The oldest part dates from the 1780s; a wing was added in 1821–22 for Dmitry Naryshkin, and in 1844–49 the palace was remodelled, with interiors by Bernhard Simon and a single façade by Nikolai Yefimov. A marriage brought it to the Shuvalov family.

After the 1917 revolution it was nationalised and later became a “House of Friendship” for foreign delegations. A seven-year restoration began in 2006, and the Fabergé Museum opened on 19 November 2013. It is privately run by Vekselberg’s Link of Times foundation.

Fabergé Museum vs the Hermitage

The Hermitage is the must-see. Fabergé makes the best second museum: compact, open every day and ten minutes from Nevsky. For another private palace interior, compare it with the Yusupov Palace.

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How to do it right

• Go straight to the Blue Room if time is short — the eggs are the point; the rest takes 40–50 minutes.
• Turn up at 10:00 on a weekday to have the egg cases to yourself.
• Use it on a Monday, when the Hermitage is closed, or a Tuesday, when the Russian Museum is.
• In summer the palace courtyard has a terrace — a good pause after the visit.
• Walk two minutes to the Anichkov Bridge afterwards for the bronze horse tamers and the view down the Fontanka.

Questions