St. Petersburg

Kunstkammer means museum in German.

The sea-green Baroque building was constructed in 1718-34 to house Peter the Great's infamous collection.

While touring Holland in 1697, Peter attended the lectures of Frederik Ruysch, the most celebrated anatomist of the day.

He was so impressed that on a return visit in 1717, he purchased the whole collection of over 2000 anatomical preparations.

In the Kunstkammer it was exhibited to a wide-eyed public, who were enticed with free glasses of vodka.

At the time the collection also included bizarre, live exhibits of deformed or unusual people.

Peter was an amateur dentist and these are some of the teeth that he extracted.

Peter's tools used to extract teeth.

On his way to Paris in 1717 he saw an extremely tall Frenchman, the giant 2.27m (7.5ft) Bourgeois whose height and chest size impressed him.

Peter brought him back as his servant. Unfortunately he died from apoplexy 7 years later.

This is his skeleton.

The museum has an excellent collection of American Indians, Eskimos and Aleutians.

Many of the artifacts were collected by the early explorers including Bering.

A native Indian hunting disguise.