Russia's Medvedev, Dutch queen open museum in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM, June 20 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands have opened a branch of the St. Petersburg-based Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam.

The Hermitage on the Amstel that opened on Friday night will soon host permanent exhibitions from Russia.

Ernst Veen, director of the new museum, said "there will be plenty to show" on loan from the Hermitage which has more than three million art objects.

A permanent exhibition at the new museum will be dedicated to Dutch-Russian relations, which started when Peter the Great went to Amsterdam in 1697 to study shipbuilding. The Russian tsar also built Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg on the model of Amsterdam.

The first exhibition, which opened on Saturday, is called "At the Russian Court. Palace and Protocol in the 19th Century." More than 1,800 exhibit loans from the St. Petersburg Hermitage are on display.

The Hermitage already has small outlets in London and Las Vegas.