Room of the Palaeolithic Age

This room (originally an anteroom in the apartments of Nicholas I's daughters) retains the decor created by the architect Alexander Briullov in 1838-39. The display is devoted to the Palaeolithic era (2 million to 10,000 years ago). It includes very ancient artefacts - stone cutting tools found at an early Palaeolithic site (Satani-Dar in Armenia). The late Palaeolithic age produced the exhibits found at Malta (in the basin of the River Angara) and Kostenki (in the Don basin) - tools and ornaments made from flint, bone, horn and mammoth ivory. Particularly interesting are mammoth ivory female statuettes and plaques depicting snakes and a mammoth.