the.com/hermitage

means A secluded dwelling where someone lives apart from society, often for religious or solitary reflection — or, by extension, any place of chosen isolation.

from Traces back through Old French 'hermitage' to 'hermite' (hermit), itself from Late Latin 'eremita,' borrowed from Greek 'erēmitēs' — one who lives in the 'erēmos,' the desert or wilderness. So the word was always about the empty place before it was about the person in it. The famous St. Petersburg museum got its name because Catherine the Great's private art rooms were, at first, exactly that — a retreat she kept apart from the crowds, before the collection outgrew the solitude entirely.