Before the concert, a walk in the Hermitage courtyard

Information about the concert in the Hermitage courtyard was published in one of the groups in Telegram, but nowhere else. Although, perhaps, it is more correct to say that I have not yet reached the necessary heights in the important business of Internet search. After all, the administrators of the channel managed to find this information somewhere! But I carefully studied the Hermitage's website, read the current posts on their microblog, and looked at a couple of aggregator sites. I couldn't find anything anywhere.

Nevertheless, I decided to go to the concert. I reasoned simply - if the information is true, I will go to the concert. And if the advert is wrong, then I'll just go for a walk. The Hermitage courtyard is a good place for a walk. And yet it is almost never used as such. Each of us sometimes comes into this courtyard - to stand in a queue and buy a ticket to the Hermitage Museum. But very rarely does anyone come to this courtyard just for a walk.

There are several entrances to the Hermitage, the entrance from the courtyard being the main one. If you want to enter the museum through this entrance, you will need to pass through Palace Square and pass under the high archway leading into the vast courtyard. Next, you will need to choose one of the queues towards the ticket office. The choice of queue doesn't matter much, all queues move at about the same speed. If you don't want to queue for a long time, just buy a ticket online - there is a separate entrance for visitors with such tickets, and there are usually no large queues. There are also separate entrances for visitors in organised groups.

The central part of the Hermitage courtyard is a garden with a fountain in the centre. While waiting for the concert to start, I walked around this garden and took some photos of the fountain. The weather on this day was unstable, sometimes the sky was covered with clouds and it started to rain. Therefore, a special pavilion with a roof but no walls was set up for the musicians. This temporary pavilion was necessary to protect the instruments from possible rain.

As it turned out, the information about the concert was accurate and the concert took place. It was called "Music of German Palaces" and was timed to coincide with the exhibition "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in Russia". A trio of musicians performed works by composers who were contemporaries of Carl Hieronymus Friedrich von Munchausen.

After the concert, I walked out through the same archway onto Palace Square. I lingered for a few seconds to photograph the openwork gates decorated with gilded monograms and symbols of imperial power. Beyond the gate, I turned onto Millionnaya Street, and had time to stroll around the summer city a little longer before another cloud caught up with me and forced me to seek refuge in a bookshop.