Fabergé Museum: Fragments of Imperial Life
Updated: 2 days ago
Before leaving for Saint Petersburg, the hometown of my boyfriend Georgii, I had created a long Google Maps list of places I wanted to visit. Far more than I would realistically have time for in one week. Among them, on Georgii’s recommendation, was the Fabergé Museum.
I expected to admire the famous jewelled eggs. What I did not expect was how much the museum would reveal about Imperial Russia, about ritual and domesticity, and about the objects people preserve through time.
3 January 2026
Saturday. Snow falls steadily over the city, covering everything in white. We decide to head into the centre, taking the tram and then the metro from the Vyborgsky District, within the historical area of Shuvalovo-Ozerki. We get off at Горный институт (Gorny Institut, “Mining Institute”) and emerge onto Bolshoy Prospekt of Vasilyevsky Island, the avenue softened by continuous snowfall.
The streets are crowded. Cafés, shops, and restaurants are full. In an underground passage, among kiosks selling souvenirs and winter accessories, I spot miniature Fabergé eggs beside ушанки (ushanki, fur hats). A first preview of what awaits us.
At the museum entrance, bags are checked and we are handed protective shoe covers before climbing the staircase of the 18th-century Naryshkin-Shuvalov Palace. Tickets cost 700 rubles, just over eight euros at the time. Jackets and bags are deposited in the cloakroom, but my camera, naturally, stays with me.
The exhibition begins on the second floor. The palace interiors have been carefully restored to recreate their historical appearance, with gilded halls, painted ceilings, velvet furnishings and mirrored walls. Even before reaching the eggs themselves, the museum is immersive and theatrical.
The Fabergé Museum houses one of the world’s most important collections of Fabergé works, including nine Imperial Easter eggs commissioned by the last Romanov tsars. The eggs entered the museum’s collection in 2004, when Russian businessman and collector Viktor Vekselberg purchased them from the Forbes family shortly before they were due to be auctioned in New York. He reportedly paid more than $100 million for the collection, later opening the museum in 2013 as part of a broader effort to preserve Russian cultural heritage.
What makes these objects fascinating is not their monetary value, but the stories they tell of affection, ritual and craftsmanship. The Fabergé eggs served a purpose beyond mere decoration. They were Easter gifts with deep symbolic meaning in the Orthodox tradition and were first commissioned by Alexander III, and later by Nicholas II, for the women of the imperial family: Empresses Maria Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna. Between 1885 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, around fifty Imperial eggs were created under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé and his workshop in Saint Petersburg.
Each egg concealed a surprise: a miniature carriage, a palace, a mechanical bird, a portrait. Tiny worlds hidden inside precious shells. In many ways, they are intimate archives of family life. Today, only forty-four Imperial eggs are known to survive in complete or partial form. Some disappeared during the upheaval of the Revolution, their whereabouts still unknown. Others travelled across continents, passing through private collections before returning to Russia decades later.
The famous Winter Egg, one of the most intricate creations of the House of Fabergé, was sold at auction in 2025 for more than 30 million US dollars. This shows how these objects continue to fascinate collectors and historians alike. Yet seeing them in person shifts the perception entirely. What photographs cannot fully capture is their scale, delicacy, and extraordinary level of detail.
Below, are the eggs that impressed me the most during the visit. Each one is a self-contained story, suspended between art, memory, and imperial mythology.
From top left to bottom right:
1 - Mauve Egg's Surprise (no egg was found)
2 - Fifteenth Anniversary Egg
3 - Imperial Coronation Egg
4 - Duchess of Marlborough Egg
5 - Lilies of the Valley Egg
6 - Order of St. George Egg
7 - Bay Tree Egg
8 - Rosebud Egg
9 - Chanticleer Egg
10 - Resurrection Egg
11 - Kelch Hen Egg
12 - Rennaissance Egg
Beyond the Eggs
The museum holds more than the eggs themselves. Display cases contain objects once used in the daily lives of the imperial families: silverware and porcelain, opera glasses and theatre binoculars, powder and medicine cases, cigarette holders, icons, frames, and personal accessories.
Walking through these rooms, I was fascinated by the culture of attention behind these objects. Care for beauty, for ritual, for presentation, for intellectual and artistic life. Even practical items were designed with extraordinary refinement.
At the end of the visit, we stop at the museum shop. I buy a кокошник (kokoshnik), the traditional Russian headdress historically worn by women with the сарафан (sarafan), its silhouette recognisable from Russian folk culture and old illustrations. For Georgii’s cousin and his family, we choose hand-painted biscuits shaped like Fabergé eggs and Щелкунчик (Shchelkunchik, The Nutcracker).
An enchantment. This museum is definitely among my favourites I have ever visited. I love the intricacy of the eggs, but even more the emotional value each one seems to radiate. Together with the surrounding objects, they tell stories of a world built around craftsmanship, ceremony, beauty, and attentive living, fragments of a culture that endured the passage of time.
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