The court recovered almost 850 thousand rubles from the visitor of the Hermitage, who sat on the throne of Paul I.

The Kalininsky District Court of St. Petersburg has recovered almost 850 thousand rubles from a man who sat on the historical throne of the Master of the Order of Malta in the Hermitage, which belonged to Emperor Paul I. This was announced on March 6 by the head of the joint press service of the city courts, Daria Lebedeva.

The incident occurred on March 21, 2025. Visitor Alexander Drobyshev sat on the throne in the Hermitage Hall and put his feet on the footstool. He ignored the warnings of the museum's caretakers. As a result, the seat of the throne was deformed, and the velvet fabric on the surface was torn. The footstool was also damaged.

"The court recovered from the man the cost of restoration work — 825,813 rubles 59 kopecks, as well as a state duty of 21,516 rubles," Lebedeva wrote on her Telegram channel.

She also explained that the throne and the bench are of high cultural importance. The exhibit is "included in the list of the best thrones in Europe."

The throne itself was made in 1799-1800 for Emperor Paul I. He took the Order of Malta under his protectorate after the French captured Malta in 1798 and became Grand Master. The throne came to the Hermitage in 1946 from the Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR.

On February 1, 2024, a security guard ate part of a painting at a contemporary art exhibition in Moscow at VDNH. The footage showed how the man approached, forcefully tore the fish away from the painting and put it in his mouth. When the culprit was asked why he did it, he spread his hands and explained that after a sleepless night he was tired and did not realize what he was doing.

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