It is home to the Hermitage Museum, one of the three largest museums in the world. The museum is housed in five palaces on the banks of the Neva River. Its name comes from one of Peter I's winter palaces. The main building of the Hermitage is the Winter Palace. The palace was turned into an art gallery by Empress Catherine II, who asked French philosopher Denis Diderot to buy paintings from French collections on her behalf. In this way, canvases of the most outstanding painters (Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Watteau, Poussin, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Canova, and others) came to St. Petersburg.
