By Linda Tancs
To tens of thousands of travelers, Russia’s Hermitage is the cat’s meow, its 365 rooms in the Main Museum Complex located in the historic centre of St. Petersburg boasting nearly three million works of art by the likes of masters from Italy, Spain, Holland, Flanders, France, England, Germany, and other Western European countries. What most visitors may not know is that its labyrinthine underground tunnels are home to nearly 100 cats, whose function is not to meow but to rid the massive complex of any mice or rats, a tradition begun centuries ago by Tsarina Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the First. Sounds like a purr-fect solution to a vexing problem.
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