St. Petersburg museums, large and small, traditionally open doors for visitors in the evening and at night, and also prepare a special program: one-day exhibitions, concerts, performances, original tours, master classes, historical reconstructions.

“Museum Night” is an international event that takes place annually in dozens of countries. Thousands of museums do not sleep once a year, opening their doors to anyone interested in seeing the museum at unusual times of the day.

Two options for participation are traditionally offered for all participants - either in the “Evening” format (from 18:00 to 23:00), or in the “Night” format (from 18:00 to 06:00). As always, to participate in the project you need to prepare a special program.

The theme of “Nights of Museums” in 2020 is “Symbols”.

Museums can help visitors understand the hidden meanings of works of art, as well as remember, formulate and rethink the symbols of time or phenomena. Some museum exhibits can be called markers of the era, they are valuable not in themselves, but as a symbol of time, an element of the cultural code that was unmistakably read by contemporaries, but can be completely incomprehensible now. Museums help to decipher these cultural codes, consider allegories in works of art, understand the symbolism of household items, clothing, and rules of behavior. They allow you to reveal secrets that are in sight, but incomprehensible, to see the invisible, to reflect on the meanings of things. They invite to a new level of understanding of art, history, reality surrounding us. We offer museums to find symbols in their collections and talk about them, or create new ones together with visitors to the “Museum Nights”.