The Hermitage Theatre in Saint Petersburg is one of five Hermitage buildings along the Neva's Palace Embankment. Giacomo Quarenghi designed it at Catherine the Great's request, and it was built from 1783 to 1787. The ceremonial opening was on November 22, 1785. It replaced the Russian Imperial Theater, which operated from 1764 to 1783, and it stands on the site of the crumbling Third Winter Palace of Peter the Great, whose old foundations are still visible on the ground floor.
The semicircular auditorium is decorated with colored marble and has ten niches for statues of Apollo and the Muses. It seated no more than 250 spectators. The original stage machinery remains in place.
The theatre hosted imperial entertainments until the Revolution, and Marius Petipa's Harlequinade premiered there in 1900. Performances resumed in 1991.
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