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These 15 Famous Museums Offer Virtual Tours You Can Take from Your Couch

Experience the best museums — from London to Mexico City — in the comfort of your own home.

If you're a dedicated art lover, you likely go to great lengths to visit renowned museums and galleries. But even when you’re not traveling, you can still get a taste of the masterpieces, artifacts, and architecture at many famous institutions — and get inspired for future trips while you're at it.

Google Arts & Culture teamed up with more than 1,200 museums and galleries around the world to create a collection of online exhibits and virtual tours . Other museums have their own virtual tours, too, such as the Vatican Museums and the Louvre , which features a selection of exhibitions on their websites.

Top 5 Can’t Miss

• View legendary artifacts like the Rosetta Stone on a virtual stroll through the British Museum.
• Gaze up at the Sistine Chapel’s divine ceiling without the crowds at the Vatican Museums.
• The Met’s immersive 360-degree VR videos are arguably the best virtual museum tours.
• Get a glimpse of the four locations of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, on a Google Street View tour.
• Peruse some of Van Gogh's most iconic works in the artist's namesake Amsterdam museum.

The British Museum, London

This iconic museum located in the heart of London allows virtual visitors to tour the Great Court, which was given a striking contemporary redesign in 2000. Move through other galleries to discover ancient artifacts like the Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies.

Vatican Museums

MihaiDancaescu / Getty Images

The next best thing to an after-hours tour , the Vatican Museums offers virtual access to more than a dozen of its galleries and richly decorated spaces. Explore the sumptuous murals of Raphael's Rooms and the Sistine Chapel, where you can zero in on Michelangelo's famous ceiling.

The Met, New York City

While you can explore highlights of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's encyclopedic collection — including the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur — via Google Arts & Culture , the institution offers its own virtual reality tours. The Met 360° Project comprises six videos that can be viewed with a VR headset for an immersive experience, complete with ambient soundtracks.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Don Eim/Travel + Leisure

One of Korea's popular museums can be accessed from anywhere around the world. Google's virtual tour gives you a taste of the museum's four locations with Street View visits and online exhibits. For a deeper dive, check out the museum's website for video walk-throughs of select exhibitions, including immersive VR versions.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Anyone who's a fan of this tragic, ingenious painter can see his works up close (or, almost up close ) by virtually visiting this museum, home to the largest collection of art by Vincent van Gogh. Check out some of his most iconic paintings, including "Sunflowers" and "The Potato Eaters."

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This renowned American art museum offers three online exhibits through Google. An overview of American fashion from 1740 to 1895 features watercolors of garments from the colonial and Revolutionary eras. You can also browse through works from Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch genre painters of the period and take an in-depth look at an early work by Leonardo da Vinci.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

If you can't get to D.C., take a stroll among the historic planes, rockets, and other craft on display at the country's top air and space museum . Check out the Wright Brothers' first bona fide plane, the Wright Flyer, which took to the skies in 1903, and astronaut Neil Armstrong's spacesuit from the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Guggenheim, New York City

NurPhoto / Getty Images

Google's Street View feature lets visitors tour the Guggenheim's famous spiral staircase without ever leaving home. From there, you can discover incredible works of art from the impressionist, post-impressionist, modern, and contemporary eras.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

European artworks from as far back as the eighth century can be found in this California art museum. Take a Street View tour to discover a huge collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, manuscripts, and photographs.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

You can virtually walk through this popular museum that houses dozens of famous French works from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Get a peek at paintings and sculptures by Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Rodin, among others.

Pergamon Museum, Berlin

As one of Germany's largest museums, Pergamon has a lot to offer — even if you can't physically be there. This historical museum is home to plenty of ancient artifacts including the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and, of course, the Pergamon Altar.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Explore masterpieces from the Dutch Golden Age, including works by Vermeer and Rembrandt. Google offers a Street View tour of this iconic museum, so you can feel as if you're actually wandering its halls.

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Housed in a purpose-built 16th-century palace, the Uffizi Gallery showcases the art collection amassed by the wealthy and powerful de' Medici family. Today, anyone can wander its halls from anywhere in the world to view world-famous works like Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus."

MASP, São Paulo

The nonprofit Museu de Arte de São Paulo was Brazil's first modern museum. Artworks placed on clear, raised frames make it seem like they're hovering in midair. Take a virtual tour to experience the wondrous display for yourself.

Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City

Getty Images / Andrew Hasson

Enter the world of 20th-century artist Frida Kahlo with a Street View tour of several spaces in Casa Azul, the modest, vivid blue-painted house where she was born, now the Frida Kahlo Museum . You can tour her studio and peek into other personal spaces like the kitchen and lush courtyard garden as well as view works by Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera.

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The 75 Best Virtual Museum Tours Around the World [Art, History, Science, and Technology]

Jarrod West

Senior Content Contributor

454 Published Articles 1 Edited Article

Countries Visited: 21 U.S. States Visited: 24

Keri Stooksbury

Editor-in-Chief

41 Published Articles 3371 Edited Articles

Countries Visited: 50 U.S. States Visited: 28

Table of Contents

Google arts and culture, 50 art museums with virtual tours, 5 natural history museums with virtual tours, 10 science and technology museums with virtual tours, 10 history museums with virtual tours, final thoughts.

We may be compensated when you click on product links, such as credit cards, from one or more of our advertising partners. Terms apply to the offers below. See our  Advertising Policy for more about our partners, how we make money, and our rating methodology. Opinions and recommendations are ours alone.

You can now access collections from many of the world’s top museums without ever leaving home! We’ve put together an ultimate list of 75 world-class museums that offer virtual tours you can visit from the comfort of your couch.

Many of the virtual tours include exhibit walk-throughs and the ability to examine some of the world’s best paintings, sculptures, and other pieces up close and personal. These virtual tours are jam-packed with enough details to make you feel like you’re really visiting the museum. The experiences are sure to entertain the whole family, an art or history buff, or even those who want to imagine the joys of travel!

We’ve broken our list into 4 easy-to-review sections, including art, natural history, science and technology, and history museums. So whether you prefer to take in a painting at the Van Gogh Museum, check out an SR-71 Blackbird at the Museum of Flight, or gaze upon the Rosetta Stone, this list has it all!

Many of the virtual exhibits in this article are offered through a collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. If you’re not familiar, Google Arts and Culture is an online platform that showcases high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from more than 2,000 museums throughout the world. You can zoom in and out of images in great detail and view some of the best pieces of artwork ever created without leaving your couch.

The platform is available in 18 languages and has been praised internationally for increasing access to art to those who may have not had the opportunity otherwise. It’s available for web , iOS , and Android .

1. The Albertina Museum (Vienna, Austria)

Year Opened:  1805

The Albertina Museum features one of the most important European collections of international modern art and houses one of the largest and most important print rooms in the world with approximately 65,000 drawings and 1 million old master prints. Hundreds of the works housed in the museum, like “Study for the Last Supper” by Da Vinci and “The Water Lily Pond” by Monet, can be viewed online thanks to a partnership with Google Arts and Culture.

To view the online exhibits, click here .

2. Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois)

Year Opened: 1879

The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the U.S., hosting approximately 1.5 million people annually. Its collection features more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world and contains more than 300,000 works of art in 11 curatorial departments.

The online tour allows you to view major pieces from the museum’s collection, such as “American Gothic,” “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” and “Nighthawks.” The site also offers projects to get creative at home, educator resources, and JourneyMaker, a digital tool that allows visitors to create unique, personalized tours of the museum.

To view the online tour, click here .

3. Benaki Museum (Athens, Greece)

Year Opened: 1930

Established in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, the Benaki Museum houses Greek works of art from prehistoric to modern times and an extensive collection of Asian art. It also hosts periodic exhibitions and maintains a state-of-the-art restoration and conservation workshop.

The entire museum can be viewed virtually in great detail.

To view the online virtual tour, click here .

4. The Broad (Los Angeles, California)

Year Opened: 2015

The Broad is a contemporary art museum named for philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. The Broad houses a nearly 2,000-piece collection of contemporary art, featuring 200 artists including works by Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. Notable installations include Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room” (pictured above) and Ragnar Kjartansson’s expansive 9-screen video “The Visitors.”

The Broad has put together a series of YouTube videos to give you a first-hand look at the museum.

5. Centre Pompidou (Paris, France)

Year Opened : 1977

The Centre Pompidou, named after the president of France from 1969 to 1974, is the largest museum for modern and contemporary art in Europe and the second-largest in the world. The museum has more than 12,000 pieces of artwork on display, including works by Kandinsky, Dalí, and Valadon.

The Centre has dozens of videos available on its YouTube channel that provide walk-throughs of the museum and explanations of its most important works.

To view the video tours, click here .

6. The Dalí Theatre-Museum (Figueres, Spain)

Year Opened : 1974

Dedicated to the life and work of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, the Dalí Theatre-Museum displays the single largest and most diverse collection of works by the artist. In addition to Dalí paintings from all decades of his career, there are Dalí sculptures, 3-dimensional collages, mechanical devices, and other curiosities from Dalí’s imagination. Through the website, guests can take a virtual tour in 360-degree of the entire museum.

To view the virtual tour, click here .

7. Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan)

Year Opened: 1885

With more than 100 galleries covering over 658,000 square feet, the Detroit Institute of Arts has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the U.S. Its collection features works spanning from ancient Egypt and Europe all the way to modern contemporary art.

The museum has put together “ At Home With DIA ” to offer school field trips from home, weekly film screenings, senior resources, and home projects. DIA also has a partnership with Google Arts and Culture to provide online exhibits including:

• Frida Kahlo in Detroit
• Ordinary People by Extraordinary Artists
• Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry
• Self Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States

8. Frick Collection (New York City, New York)

Year Opened: 1935

Located in the Henry Clay Frick House, the Frick Collection houses the art collection of industrialist Henry Clay Frick. The collection features some of the best-known paintings by major European artists, including Bellini, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, as well as numerous works of sculpture and porcelain.

The entire museum can be viewed virtually.

9. Galleria dell’Accademia (Florence, Italy)

Year Opened : 1784

The Galleria dell’Accademia, while small compared to other museums featured, is still the second most visited museum in Italy. Its command of visitors is in large part due to its display of perhaps the most famous sculpture in history — Michaelangelo’s statue of David.

You can view a short, video-guided tour of the museum, which includes 360-degree viewing, allowing you to get a close look at the museum’s offerings.

To view the video tour, click here .

10. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (Sante Fe, New Mexico)

Year Opened: 1997

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is dedicated to the artistic legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe and her contributions to American Modernism. The museum’s collection includes many of O’Keeffe’s key works, ranging from her innovative abstractions to her iconic large-format flower, skull, and landscape paintings, to paintings of architectural forms, rocks, shells, and trees. Initially, the collection was made of 140 O’Keeffe paintings, watercolors, pastels, and sculptures, but now includes nearly 1,200 objects.

The museum website offers creative activities, stories, and education about Georgia O’Keeffe’s life, along with several virtual exhibits available through Google Arts and Culture, including:

• Georgia O’Keeffe
• American Modernism
• United States

11. Grand Palais (Paris, France)

Year Opened : 1900

The Grand Palais is a large historic site, exhibition hall, and museum dedicated to the organization of exhibitions, publishing books, art workshops, photographic agency, and hosting major fairs and events. The museum receives 2.5 million visitors each year. The partnership with Google Arts and Culture brings extensive online exhibits to life, from the construction of the building to the masterpieces that lie within it.

12. Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg, Russia)

Year Opened : 1764

The Hermitage Museum is the second-largest and eighth-most visited art museum in the world. The Hermitage has more than 60,000 pieces of artwork on display, including the “Peacock Clock” by James Cox, “Madonna Litta” by Leonardo Da Vinci, and works by Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Antonio Canova.

The online tour is extremely comprehensive and allows you to virtually walk through all 6 buildings in the main complex, treasure gallery, and several exhibition projects.

13. High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia)

Year Opened : 1905

The High Museum of Art offers over 15,000 works of art in its collection and is the leading art museum in the southeastern U.S. The museum focuses on 19th- and 20th-century American art, historic and contemporary decorative arts and design, European paintings, modern and contemporary art, photography, folk and self-taught art, and African art.

The museum’s partnership with Google Arts and Culture also offers online exhibits for viewing including:

• Bill Traylor’s Drawings of People, Animals, and Events
• How Iris van Herpen Transformed Fashion
• Incredible, Innovative, and Unexpected Contemporary Furniture Designs
• Photos From the Civil Rights Movement

14. The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California)

Year Opened: 1953

The J. Paul Getty Museum is made up of 2 campuses — the Getty Center and Getty Villa — that receive more than 2 million visitors per year. The Getty Center features pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts and photographs from the 1830s through present-day from all over the world. The Getty Villa displays art from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.

The museum has put together online resources like art books, online exhibitions, podcasts, and videos, all viewable on its website .

It has also partnered with Google Arts and Culture to showcase online exhibits including:

• 18th Century Pastel Portraits
• The Art of Three Faiths: Torah, Bible, Qur’an
• Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
• Getty Museum Acquisitions 2019
• Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well

To view the online galleries, click here .

15. Kunsthaus Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland)

Year Opened : 1910

The Kunsthaus Zürich features one of Switzerland’s most important art collections from the 13th century to the present day. While the museum places an emphasis on Swiss artists, including Alberto Giacometti, you’ll also find work from the likes of Monet, Picasso, and Warhol.

The museum’s partnership with Google Arts and Culture has digitized several of the museum’s best collections for viewing.

16. La Galleria Nazionale (Rome, Italy)

Year Opened: 1883

La Galleria Nazionale displays about 1,100 paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries — the largest collection in Italy. It features work from famous Italian artists including Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Alberto Burri, and foreign artists including Cézanne, Monet, Pollock, Rodin, and Van Gogh.

It has teamed up with Google to offer 16 virtual exhibits for online viewing.

17. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (Los Angeles, California)

Year Opened: 1910

LACMA is the largest art museum in the western U.S., attracts nearly a million visitors annually, and holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present.

The website (click LACMA @ Home ) includes exhibition walkthroughs, soundtracks and live recordings, online teaching resources, and courses.

To view the LACMA’s online virtual tour from Google Arts & Culture, click here .

18. Mauritshuis (The Hague, Netherlands)

Year Opened : 1822

The Mauritshuis is home to some of the best Dutch paintings from the Golden Age of Art. The museum consists of 854 works by artists like Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt Van Rijn, and Jan Steen. Famous works include “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (pictured above) and “View of Delft” by Vermeer, and “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” by Rembrandt.

The museum has partnered with Google Arts and Culture to bring several of its best works to life for virtual viewing.

To view the Mauritshuis’ online exhibits, click here .

19. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, New York)

Year Opened: 1870

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, also known as “The Met,” is the largest art museum in the U.S. and the fourth most visited museum in the world with more than 6 million visitors each year. The permanent collection contains more than 2 million works from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all of the European masters (including Monet’s Water Lillies), and an extensive collection of American and modern art. It also has extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art.

The museum has extensive different online exhibits available for viewing through Google and its own Art at Home website .

20. Musée du Louvre (Paris, France)

Year Opened:  1793

The Louvre Palace, which houses the museum, began as a fortress under Philip II in the 12th century to protect the city from English soldiers that were in Normandy. It wasn’t repurposed as a museum until 1793. Now, the Louvre is easily one of the most historic art museums in the world. Not only is the Louvre the largest art museum in the world at 782,910 square feet (72,735 square meters), but it also had 9.6 million visitors in 2019, making it the most visited museum in the world as well. Featured masterpieces include “Mona Lisa,” “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” “Venus de Milo,” and “Hammurabi’s Code.”

The Louvre has several virtual galleries on display, including:

• The Advent of the Artist, including works from Delacroix, Rembrandt, and Tintoretto
• Egyptian Antiquities, featuring collections from the Pharaonic period
• Remains of the Louvre’s Moat — visitors can walk around the original perimeter moat and view the piers that supported the drawbridge dating back to 1190
• Galerie d’Apollon, destroyed by fire in 1661 and recently rebuilt for viewing

To view the Louvre’s virtual tour page, click here .

21. Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France)

Year Opened: 1986

The Musée d’Orsay is housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe and had more than 3.6 million visitors in 2019. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, including works by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Sisley, and Van Gogh.

The museum allows you to virtually walk through one of its popular galleries, featuring hundreds of paintings from French artists.

To view the Musée d’Orsay online gallery, click here .

22. Museo Nacional del Prado (Madrid, Spain)

Year Opened : 1819

The Museo Nacional del Prado is considered to have one of the greatest collections of European art in the world and offers guests the single largest collection of Spanish art. The collection currently comprises around 8,200 drawings, 7,600 paintings, 4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures. Well-known works include “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez, “The Third of May 1808” by Francisco De Goya, and “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch.

The museum’s online gallery allows you to get a close look at over 10,000 different pieces of art. The Prado also offers a 1-hour live show on Instagram every morning at 4 a.m. EST.

To view the online gallery, click here .

23. Museo Frida Kahlo (Mexico City, Mexico)

Year Opened: 1958

The Frida Kahlo Museum, also known as the Blue House due to its blue walls, is a historic museum dedicated to the life and work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The building was Kahlo’s birthplace, the home where she grew up, lived with her husband Diego Rivera for many years, and where she later died in a room on the upper floor. The museum contains a collection of artwork by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and other artists, along with the couple’s Mexican folk art, pre-Hispanic artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, personal items, and more. Find out more in our guide to the best museums in Mexico City .

24. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain)

Year Opened: 1990

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, also called the Museo Reina Sofía, is one of the most popular art museums in the world. The museum includes large collections of Spain’s 2 most popular artists, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. Famous works on display include “Guernica” and “Woman in Blue” by Picasso and “Cubist Self Portrait” by Dalí.

You can view collections of artwork at the Reina Sofía through its partnership with Google Arts and Culture.

25. Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil)

Year Opened: 1947

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo is Brazil’s first modern art museum. The museum is internationally recognized for its collection of European art, as it’s considered the finest museum in Latin America and all of the Southern Hemisphere. The museum primarily features Brazilian art, prints, and drawings, as well as smaller collections of African and Asian art, antiquities, decorative arts, and others, amounting to more than 8,000 pieces. MASP also has one of the largest art libraries in the country.

You can now take a virtual tour of online galleries the museum has to offer, including:

• Art from Brazil until 1900
• Art from Italy: Rafael to Titian
• Art from France: from Delacroix to Cézanne
• Art in Fashion
• Histories of Madness: The Drawings of Juquery
• Picture Gallery in Transformation

26. Museum of Broken Relationships (Los Angeles, California and Zagreb, Croatia)

Year Opened: 2010

The Museum of Broken Relationships is dedicated to failed love relationships. Its exhibits include personal objects left over from former lovers, accompanied by brief descriptions. The museum was founded by 2 Zagreb-based artists, film producer Olinka Vištica and sculptor Dražen Grubišić, after their 4-year relationship came to an end.

The virtual tour includes a close-up collection of dozens of the museum’s most interesting pieces.

27. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, Massachusetts)

The 17th largest art museum in the world, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) hosts one of the most extensive art collections in the U.S. It houses over 8,000 paintings, surpassed only by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and exceeds 1 million visitors each year. Pieces by world-renowned artists like Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Monet are featured alongside sculptures, mummies, ceramics, and other artifacts from ancient civilizations.

There are currently 16 online exhibits available for viewing.

28. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, Texas)

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is one of the largest museums in the U.S., and its collection features over 64,000 works from 6 continents. The collection places emphasis on pre-Columbian and African gold, Renaissance and Baroque painting and sculpture, 19th- and 20th-century art, photography, and Latin American art. Read our guide to the best museums in Houston for more information.

The museum has 14 online exhibits available for viewing in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture.

29. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York City, New York)

Year Opened: 1929

Regarded as one of the largest and most influential museums of modern art in the world, MoMA’s art collection features an overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books, and artist’s books, film, and electronic media. MoMA’s holdings include more than 150,000 individual pieces including Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” in addition to approximately 22,000 films and 4 million film stills.

MoMA’s website offers 86,000 works of art that can be viewed online, along with a partnership with Google Arts and Culture to create a virtual display of its Sophie Taeber-Arp exhibit.

To view the website’s collection, click here . To view the Google exhibit, click here .

30. National Gallery (London, England)

Year Opened : 1824

The National Gallery features more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900, including works such as “Sunflowers” by Van Gogh, “The Virgin on the Rocks” by Da Vinci, and “The Arnolfini Portrait” by Jan Van Eyck.

Its website offers a few virtual tours, showcasing many rooms in the museum, the Sainsbury Wing, and a Google Virtual tour.

31. National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)

Year Opened: 1937

The National Gallery of Art and its attached Sculpture Garden are located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and are open to the public free of charge. The museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress.

The National Gallery is widely considered to be one of the greatest museums in the U.S. It ranks second in total visitors of all American museums, 10th in the world, and features incredible pieces including Jackson Pollock’s “Number 1,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Ginevra de’ Benci,” and Degas’ “Little Dancer Aged 14.”

The museum has put together a collection of educational resources on its website for teachers, families, and children. It also features online exhibits through Google Arts and Culture including:

• American Fashion — highlights from 1740 to 1895
• Johannes Vermeer — Dutch Baroque painter

To view the National Gallery of Art online collection page, click here .

32. National Gallery of Victoria (Victoria, Melbourne, Australia)

Year Opened: 1861

The National Gallery of Victoria is Australia’s oldest, largest, and most visited art museum. The museum offers a wide variety of international and Australian art in its collection, including paintings, drawings, photography, and sculptures.

The online tour includes walk-throughs of exhibits, including highlights from the NGV Triennial 2020 and Chinese Collection, as well as exhibits featuring Goya and KAWS.

33. National Museum of China (Beijing, China)

Year Opened : 2003

The National Museum of China covers Chinese history from 1.7 million years ago to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Notable works include the “Houmuwu” Rectangle Ding, a rectangular bronze sacrificial vessel made in the late Shang Dynasty, the heaviest piece of ancient bronze ware in the world, and a Han Dynasty jade burial suit laced with gold thread. It is one of the largest museums in the world, and the second most visited art museum in the world, just after the Louvre.

The museum has virtual exhibits available for 360-degree viewing including:

• Resplendence of the Tang Dynasty
• Sunken Silver

34. National Museum of Korea (Seoul, South Korea)

Year Opened : 1909

The National Museum of Korea is the top museum of Korean history and art and has been committed to various studies and research activities in the fields of archaeology, history, and art, continuously developing a variety of exhibitions and education programs.

The museum’s virtual tour provides a 3D walk-through of exhibits, including 1,000 years of Korean design and 500 years of the Joseon Dynasty.

35. National Museum, New Delhi (New Delhi, India)

Year Opened: 1949

The National Museum, New Delhi is one of the largest museums in India. The museum has around 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, including paintings, sculptures, jewelry, ancient texts, armor, and decorative arts ranging from the pre-historic era to modern works — covering over 5,000 years.

The museum has partnered with Google to bring its online exhibits to life, including:

• Art of Caligraphy
• Cadence and Counterpoint
• Indian Bronzes
• Nauras: The Many Arts of the Deccan
• Pottery from Ancient Peru
• Treasures of National Museum, India
• Radha and Krishna in the Boat of Love

36. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea)

Year Opened: 1969

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was first established in 1969 as the only national art museum in South Korea, accommodating modern and contemporary art of Korea and international art of different time periods. The museum features over 7,000 pieces of artwork, including works of contemporary Korean artists such as Go Hui-dong, Ku Bon-ung, Park Su-geun, and Kim Whan-ki.

Google’s virtual tour takes you through 6 floors of contemporary art from Korea and all over the globe.

37. National Palace Museum (Taipei, Taiwan)

Year Opened : 1965

The National Palace Museum has a collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks. The collection encompasses 8,000 years of history of Chinese art, including jade, paintings, bronzes, and porcelain that were formerly held in the Forbidden City of Peking.

The museum offers 360-degree virtual tours of many different exhibits.

To view the virtual tours, click here .

38. National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.)

Year Opened : 1962

The National Portrait Gallery has a collection of over 21,000 works of art. The collection focuses on images of famous Americans and how they’ve shaped U.S. culture. A major attraction of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection is the Hall of Presidents, which contains portraits of nearly all American presidents. It is the largest and most complete collection in the world, except for the White House collection itself.

The museum has several collections featured on Google Arts and Culture, but also offers digital workshops, and distance learning resources for children and teachers.

To view the online resources, click here .

39. Pergamonmuseum (Berlin, Germany)

The Pergamonmuseum houses monumental buildings, such as the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, and the Market Gate of Miletus reconstructed from the ruins found in Anatolia, as well as the Mshatta Facade. The museum is subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. It is visited by over 1 million people every year.

The museum has dozens of structures and other artifacts that can be viewed online.

40. Picasso Museum (Barcelona, Spain)

Year Opened: 1963

The Picasso Museum, located in the heart of Barcelona’s Latin Quarter, is visited by millions every year. They come to marvel at the best works of Picasso, perhaps the most famous painter of all, but stay to marvel at the best-preserved medieval architecture in Barcelona. With 4,251 works by the painter exhibited, the museum has one of the most complete permanent collections of his works.

The online tour offers a large selection of Picasso’s finest works, as well as virtual tours of the museum’s beautiful courtyards.

41. Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Year Opened: 1798

The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague in 1798 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace. The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and first opened in 1885. The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history from the years 1200 to 2000, and a total collection of 1 million objects. The museum features masterpieces including Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” and “The Jewish Bride,” plus works by Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer, who are known to have been major contributors to the Golden Age of Dutch art.

Google offers a street view tour of some excellent art pieces located in the museum, and the museum has put together an entire virtual tour of all of the museum’s masterpieces viewable on its website.

To view the Google street view tour, click here . You can also view the museum’s From Home microsite and masterpieces tour .

42. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, California)

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is composed of over 33,000 works of art spread throughout 7 gallery floors and 45,000 square feet of space. Following a 3-year closure for expansion, the museum reopened in 2016 and is now one of San Francisco’s must-see destinations.

SFMOMA’s website is updated regularly with videos and articles regarding current exhibits, projects, and artist showcases and provides behind-the-scenes looks of the museum. 

To view the museum’s multimedia features, click here .

Read our guide to the best museums in San Francisco to find out more.

43. Sistine Chapel at the Vatican Museums (Vatican City)

Year Opened: 1483

The Sistine Chapel, located inside of the Apostolic Palace (the official residence of the pope in Vatican City), is easily the most popular chapel in the world. The chapel is famous for its magnificent ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, and is considered to be one of the best artworks to come out of the Italian Renaissance. The primary panels of the ceiling showcase 9 scenes from the Book of Genesis, of which “The Creation of Adam” (pictured above) is the best known and most recognized.

Its website offers a virtual tour of the chapel’s most stunning sites, including the ability to marvel at Michelangelo’s ceiling from the comfort of your couch.

44. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City, New York)

Year Opened: 1939

The Guggenheim Museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year.

Google’s  Street View feature lets you tour the Guggenheim’s famous spiral staircase and some of its art pieces. It also offers a handful of online collections on its website .

45. Tate Modern (London, England)

Year Opened: 2000

Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world, consisting of art dating from 1900 until today. The gallery receives over 5 million visitors a year, making it the sixth most visited art museum in the world and the most visited in the U.K.

The Tate Modern has published dozens of videos on its YouTube channel that give you an in-depth look at many of its exhibits, including the Andy Warhol exhibit and the Aubrey Beardsley exhibit.

To view the Tate Modern’s YouTube channel, click here .

46. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid, Spain)

Year Opened: 1992

Located in Madrid, the Thyssen has over 1,600 paintings inside its walls and was once the second-largest private collection in the world after the British Royal Collection. It includes works from the Italian primitives, the English, Dutch, and German schools, Impressionists, Expressionists, and European and American paintings from the 20th century. It also features pieces from the continent’s most celebrated artists including Rembrandt and Dalí.

The virtual tour includes a detailed look at the permanent collection, along with exhibits including the Rembrandt and Impressionist galleries.

47. Tokyo National Museum (Tokyo, Japan)

Year Opened : 1872

The Tokyo National Museum is the oldest and largest art museum in Japan, and one of the largest art museums in the world. At the museum, you’ll find a collection of artwork and cultural objects from Asia, ancient and medieval Japanese art, and Asian art along the Silk Road.

The museum has teamed up with Google’s Arts and Culture to provide an inside look at what the museum has to offer.

48. Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy)

Year Opened: 1581

The Uffizi was designed by Giorgio Vasari for Cosimo I de’ Medici, whose family members were by far the largest patrons of art in Renaissance Italy. The museum now spans over 139,000 square feet with 101 different rooms that house its art pieces, including famous pieces such as “The Birth of Venus.” Over 2 million people visit the Uffizi each year, making it the most viewed art museum in Italy.

The museum has teamed up with Google to showcase online galleries including:

• Piero di Cosimo, Perseus Freeing Andromeda
• The Santa Trinita Maestà, Cimabue
• The Creative Process Behind Federico Barocci’s Drawings
• Drawings by Amico Aspertini and other Bolognese artists

49. Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Year Opened: 1973

The Van Gogh Museum is dedicated to perhaps one of the most famous artists of all time — Vincent Van Gogh. The museum contains the largest collection of Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings in the world, including over 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and over 750 personal letters. The museum has over 2 million visitors each year and is the 23rd most visited art museum in the world. Find out more in our review to the best museums in Amsterdam .

The museum has teamed up with Google to create online exhibits on Vincent Van Gogh’s love life and the books he loved to read. You can also visit the museum’s website for a selection of things to do for young children, including school lessons and coloring pages.

50. Victoria and Albert Museum (London, England)

Year Opened : 1852

The Victoria and Albert Museum collection spans 5,000 years of art from Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa. The collection of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewelry, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings, and photographs is among the largest and most comprehensive in the world.

The virtual tour, in partnership with Google Arts and Culture, offers several online exhibits ranging from fashion to surrealism.

1. American Museum of Natural History (New York City, New York)

Year Opened : 1869

One of the largest natural history museums in the world, the American Museum of Natural History contains 34 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts.

The museum’s 360-degree virtual tours offer an up-close look at permanent exhibits, current exhibits, past exhibits, and research stations.

2. The British Museum (London, England)

Year Opened: 1759

The British Museum is one of the largest in the world and houses over 8 million works within its walls. Established in 1759, it was the first public national museum in the world. Visitors can tour the great court and view some of the most famous objects in history, like the Elgin Marbles of Greece and the Rosetta Stone of Egypt.

The Museum is the world’s largest indoor space on Google Street View and you can go on a virtual visit to more than 60 galleries.

The British Museum also has virtual galleries on display, including:

• Prints and Drawings

To visit the British Museum’s virtual tour page, click here .

3. National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City, Mexico)

Year Opened: 1964

The National Museum of Anthropology is the largest and most visited museum in all of Mexico. The museum contains significant archaeological and anthropological artifacts from Mexico’s pre-Columbian heritage, such as the Stone of the Sun (or the Aztec calendar stone) and the Aztec Xochipilli statue.

The museum has made more than 100 items available for Google visitors to explore from home.

To view the museum’s online collection, click here .

4. National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C.)

Located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is the 11th most visited museum in the world and the most visited natural history museum in the world. With over 325,000 square feet of exhibition space, the museum’s collections contain over 145 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts — the largest natural history collection in the world. Highlights of the collection include the Hope Diamond and the Star of Asia Sapphire.

You can view all of these specimens from the comfort of your home as the museum has dozens of different online exhibits that can all be accessed on its website.

To view the museum’s virtual tour, click here .

5. Natural History Museum (London, England)

Year Opened: 1881

Undoubtably one of the best Museums in London , the Natural History Museum in London showcases 80 million life and earth science specimens of great historical and scientific value, even housing pieces collected by Charles Darwin. There are 5 categories within the museum: botany , entomology , mineralogy , paleontology , and zoology . Over 5 million people visit this museum each year, making it the most visited natural history museum in Europe.

One of the museum’s most prominent displays is the skeleton of an 82-foot long blue whale named Hope, which you can learn more about through a self-guided virtual tour, along with several other galleries. 

1. London Science Museum (London, England)

Year Opened : 1857

The London Science Museum holds a collection of over 300,000 items, including famous items such as Stephenson’s Rocket, Puffing Billy (the oldest surviving steam locomotive), the first jet engine, some of the earliest remaining steam engines, and documentation of the first typewriter.

Thanks to Google Street View, guests can take a virtual tour of the entire museum, or watch curator gallery guides on the museum’s YouTube channel.

To view the virtual tour or videos, click here .

2. Museo Galileo (Florence, Italy)

Dedicated to the scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Museo Galilei is housed in an 11th-century palace known as the Palazzo Castellini. The museum has a collection of over 5,000 ancient scientific instruments dating back to the 13th century, and among its most notable items is the telescope Galileo used to discover the satellites of Jupiter.

Visitors from around the world have the opportunity to explore the inside of the museum and can access more than 1,000 permanent exhibition objects through the online catalog.

3. The Museum of Flight (Seattle, Washington)

Year Opened: 1965

The Museum of Flight is the largest private air and space museum in the world and attracts over 500,000 visitors every year. The museum has more than 150 aircraft in its collection, including the Lockheed Model 10-E Electra (the aircraft Amelia Earhart was piloting when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean), Boeing 747s, and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (pictured above).

The museum offers 360-degree tours that let you step inside dozens of these iconic aircraft.

4. The Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium (Brussels, Belgium)

Year Opened: 1846

The Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium is dedicated to natural history and is part of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. The dinosaur hall of the museum is the world’s largest museum hall completely dedicated to dinosaurs, and its most important pieces are 30 fossilized Iguanodon skeletons, which were discovered in 1878 in Bernissart.

It has partnered with Google to set up virtual exhibits for viewing, including:

• 360-degree guided tour
• The Bernissart Iguanodons
• From Salehanthropus to Homo Sapiens
• Over 250 Years of Natural Sciences
• Past, Present, Future: The Marvels of Evolution

To view the museum’s online exhibits, click here .

5. Museum of Science, Boston (Boston, Massachusetts)

Year Opened: 1830

The Museum of Science, Boston, receiving over 1.5 million visitors annually, is a museum and indoor zoo with more than 700 interactive exhibits and over 100 animals, many of which have been rescued and rehabilitated.

The museum offers a phenomenal virtual tour full of digital exhibits, videos, and audio presentations.

6. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (Washington, D.C.)

NASA, founded in 1958, was created by the federal government to develop the civilian space program, as well as to conduct aeronautics, space, and astrophysics research. Since its inception, NASA has been responsible for historic space missions including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the space shuttle.

NASA has partnered with Google Arts and Culture to bring many online exhibits to life to showcase the beauty of space exploration.

7. National Air and Space Museum (Washington, D.C.)

Year Opened : 1946

The National Air and Space Museum is a center for the history and science of aviation, spaceflight, planetary science, terrestrial geology, and geophysics. It is the fifth most visited museum in the world (the second most visited in the U.S.), and contains the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, the Friendship 7 capsule, the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer airplane, and Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.

The virtual tour offers a 360-degree walk-through of the entire museum.

8. National Museum of Computing (Bletchley Park, England)

Year Opened: 2007

The National Museum of Computing is dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is home to the world’s largest collection of working historic computers dating back to the 1940s, including a rebuilt Mark 2 Colossus computer, alongside an exhibition of the most complex code-cracking activities performed at the Park.

In the 3D virtual tour, viewers can move around the galleries looking at the machines and their descriptions with the added bonus of hyperlinks to video and text explanations providing further detail and history of the exhibits.

9. National Museum of the United States Air Force (Riverside, Ohio)

Year Opened: 1923

Located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Riverside, Ohio, the National Museum of the United States Air Force is the oldest and largest military aviation museum in the world, with more than 360 aircraft and missiles on display.

The virtual tour allows visitors to take a virtual, 360-degree, self-guided tour of the entire museum by navigating from gallery to gallery.

10. Oxford University’s History of Science Museum (Oxford, England)

Year Opened: 1683

Oxford’s History of Science Museum holds a leading collection of scientific instruments from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

The museum, ever ahead of the times, has offered virtual tours since 1995. You’ll get to explore the fantastic exhibits and artifacts of some of the most important scientific discoveries in science history.

1. Acropolis Museum (Athens, Greece)

Year Opened : 2009

The Acropolis Museum is centered around the archaeological findings at the site of Athens’ most important structure — the Acropolis. The museum was built to house every artifact found on the rock and surrounding slopes, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Greece.

The museum has partnered with Google Arts and Culture to bring the museum to life virtually. Now you can view rock, marble, and sculptures certificates, all of which are thousands of years old, all from the comfort of your couch!

2. American Battlefield Trust Virtual Battlefield Tours

The American Battlefield Trust Virtual Battlefield Tours offers the incredible opportunity to experience 360-degree virtual tours of more than 20 American Revolution and Civil War battlefields. You can explore Gettysburg, with 15 different stops, each of which features icons that discuss in great detail the history and significance of the battle.

3. Anne Frank House (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Year Opened: 1957

What was once the house where Anne Frank went into hiding during WWII is now a museum dedicated to increasing awareness of Anne’s story and life in the attic. The Anne Frank House was established in cooperation with Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, and now welcomes over 1 million visitors from around the world each year.

The museum’s website offers a virtual reality tour of the annex, along with other educational resources about Anne’s life.

4. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (Hyde Park, New York)

Year Opened: 1941

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum holds the records of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd U.S. president (1933 to 1945). The museum showcases the history behind FDR’s story, his presidency, New Deal policies, assassination attempt, and wartime decisions.

The 360-degree online tour gives you a close look at original documents, artifacts, and videos from FDR’s life.

5. National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, D.C.)

Year Opened: 2003

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African-American life, history, and culture. It was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African-Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 36,000 artifacts.

The museum website offers more than 15 different online exhibits covering African American history and culture.

Check out its online virtual tour  and digital resources guide .

6. National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.)

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History has more than 1.8 million objects that highlight the history of the U.S — including the original Star-Spangled Banner, Julia Child’s kitchen, Abraham Lincoln’s top hat, Indiana Jones’ fedora and whip, and more!

The museum offers about 100 online exhibits from its encyclopedic collections, each with a mix of photos, video, graphics, and text on topics ranging through the nation’s entire history.

7. National Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Year Opened : 1866

The National Museum of Scotland is dedicated to Scottish antiquities, culture, and history. The museum contains artifacts from around the world, encompassing geology, archaeology, natural history, science, technology, art, and world cultures. Popular items from the collections include Dolly the Sheep, the Arthur’s Seat coffins, and the Cramond Lioness sculpture.

The Museum’s galleries have been captured digitally in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, along with a virtual walk-through thanks to Google Street View.

8. National Women’s History Museum (Alexandria, Virginia)

Year Opened: 1996

Founded in 1996 by Karen Staser, the National Women’s History Museum researches, collects, and exhibits the contributions of women to the social, cultural, economic, and political life of our nation in the context of world history.

Its website currently features 29 different online exhibits!

9. Terra Cotta Warriors of Xi’an at Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum (Xi’an, China)

Year Opened: 1974 (created third century B.C.)

The Terracotta Army at Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210 to 209 B.C. to protect the emperor in his afterlife. The sculptures include warriors, chariots, and horses. Estimates from 2007 were that the 3 pits containing the Terracotta Army held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remained buried in the pits near Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum.

The online experience allows you to get up close and personal with the sculptures in a full 360-degree experience!

To view the online virtual experience, click here .

10. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, D.C.)

Year Opened: 1980

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is the country’s official memorial to the Holocaust. It is located on the National Mall alongside other monuments dedicated to freedom. Each year, the museum encourages its 1.6 million visitors to promote human dignity, confront hatred, prevent genocide, and strengthen democratic values. The museum’s collection includes millions of archival documents, artifacts, photographs, footage, and a list of over 200,000 registered survivors and their families, among other historical items.

Its website offers a wide selection of educational resources, including a virtual tour, and is available in 16 languages.

There you have it — 75 amazing #MuseumsAtHome options filled with one-of-a-kind artifacts covering art, science, history, and natural history, all of which can be “visited” virtually while you lounge in your pajamas! So whether you’re a massive fan of art, looking for an educational experience for your children, or simply need a way to keep yourself entertained, you can’t go wrong with a virtual tour of any of these world-class museums.

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13 Museums You Can Visit Online During Your Quarantine

If you're stuck at home, why not get some culture?

BuzzFeed Staff

1. The Guggenheim , New York City

You can tour the Guggenheim Museum's collection via Google Street View , which allows you to actually "walk" the halls of this architectural marvel. When you approach the artwork, Google will provide details about the piece (most of the time).

2. The Musée D'Orsay , Paris

Google Street View also takes you inside the famous Musée D'Orsay in Paris, which is home to many famous works, including van Gogh's famous self-portrait and Whistler's Portrait of the Artist's Mother .

3. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art , Seoul

The huge collection of South Korea's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art is also available for virtual tours through Google Maps. Some of the exhibits that involve motion or video (like the piece pictured above) will only be in still images, unfortunately, but there's plenty of canvas art and photography to enjoy, too.

4. The J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles

The Getty Center offers virtual tours through Google Street View , so you can not only view the artwork and sculptures on display but also enjoy the amazing architecture. If there's an area of the museum's grounds that you can't reach with Street View, you should at least be able to find lots of photos via Google Maps.

5. The Uffizi Gallery , Florence

The Uffizi Gallery is home to the art collection of the de' Medici family and features famous works like Botticelli's Birth of Venus or Caravaggio's Medusa . Check out the virtual tour !

6. The Boboli Gardens , Florence

Your movement might be a bit limited, but you can still virtually visit the Boboli Gardens , which are part of the Pitti Palace in Florence. Just in case you want to see some greenery after wandering museum halls all day.

7. Machu Picchu , Cusco, Peru

While you won't quite get the same effect as being there in person, being able to walk through the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru is still pretty cool through your computer screen.

8. The Museu de Arte de São Paulo

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo in Brazil houses some incredible works of art, but the thing that really sets it apart from other art museums is the way the works are displayed. Mounted with concrete blocks and glass, these artworks look like they're floating in midair.

9. The Museo Dolores Olmedo , Mexico City

A virtual tour through Mexico's Museo Dolores Olmedo includes archaeological pieces from Mexico's history and permanent exhibits featuring the work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

10. The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago was featured prominently in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and also happens to be one of my favorite museums in the whole world. In this virtual tour , you'll find a huge collection including works from Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Cézanne.

11. The Palace of Versailles , France

So maybe your apartment isn't a palace. That's OK. You can walk through France's Palace of Versailles, including the famous Hall of Mirrors, via this virtual tour . In addition to the lavish architecture, the palace includes canvas art and beautiful murals.

12. The Tokyo National Museum

Japan's Tokyo National Museum has both art and antiquities on display from Japan's history, as well as from neighboring Asian countries. In this virtual tour you can see all kinds of historical artifacts, as well as famous works like The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa .

13. The National Palace of Sintra , Portugal

The National Palace of Sintra is an exceptionally well-preserved palace and a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. The architecture is stunning and well worth a look through Google Street View .

If you want to see more, there are TONS of sites you can see through Street View, from cricket grounds to the Taj Mahal. Check out the full collection !

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25 Best & Famous Virtual Museum Tours

Virtual Reality, VR, Immersive Technology & Simulated Environment

Recently updated on June 18th, 2021 at 01:30 am

During our childhood days, whenever we want to visit the museum, we need to physically be there with our teachers or parents. However, with the latest virtual reality technology, we are now able to attend it virtually too. Now, let’s see what is the popular, the best and famous virtual museum tours that we and our kids can try from the comfort of our home and sofa.

What is Virtual Museum Tour?

It is another way to experience the museum without being physically at the location. For this purpose, usually the museums will use approach such as 360-degrees videos or walk-around tour. With this facility, you can have the tour in 360 degrees and some is available in VR format too. Most of the virtual tours are also interactive where they provide the voice over descriptions with slideshows as well.

The List of Famous Virtual Museum Tours…

We try our best to get the list of good museum virtual tours that you can try at home. Some of them claim that they have virtual reality gallery , but in order to try it you need to go there physically first. And from what we found, this is the list that you can try without coming to the museum itself. As much as possible, we will try to provide more variety to the list below…

1) Smithsonian American Art Museum

This very famous museum in America offer the virtual reality tour for us to experience the Renwick Gallery Exhibition . To add, there are nine great contemporary artists that involved in creating it using InstaVR platform. To enjoy the tour, you can try it yourself by downloading the “ Wonder 360 ” app to your mobile phone and use it with the Google Cardboard technology that should be affordable to nearly everybody.

URL : https://americanart.si.edu/wonder360

2) Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

This museum located in England also offer the looks inside it from remote. The virtual tour consists of four locations is the collaboration between the museum and Scan Tech Digital company. In addition, they are using Matterport platform to deliver it.

URL : https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/bmag/virtual-tour

3) Franklin Institute in Philadelphia

IMS provided service that offer the 360 degrees view of this popular museum in United States. Beside that, the tour includes the view of different event spaces and come up with the option to open photo galleries or videos of the space. You can watch the tour by using your browser.

URL : http://3hundred60.com/Franklin_Institute_360web.html

4) Musée du Louvre, Paris

This famous Louvre museum in Paris, France, has the exhibit called “ Monalisa: Beyond the Glass “. As most of us already know, Monalisa is a great and most popular painting in the world by Leonardo da Vinci. This exhibit is the collaboration between this museum and also the HTC Vive Arts. In addition, you can download the app from the VIVEPORT website .

URL : https://arts.vive.com/us/articles/projects/art-photography/mona_lisa_beyond_the_glass/

Furthermore, Louvre is one of the most historic art museums and also the most visited museum in the world. Hence, it is very thankful that they also provide the Louvre virtual tour service for us to visit the museum during this COVID-19 pandemic season. In addition, it offers seven galleries that you can explore via online. One of them sounds interesting to us which is “ Founding Myths: From Hercules to Darth Vader “. It looks into how the artists, filmmakers and musicians around the world have drawn inspiration from myths to create their masterpieces.

URL : https://www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne

5) Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

This great museum in Washington, D.C, is the most visited natural history museum in the world. It also offers the virtual tour of its museum by using our own web browser. They build it by using the WebVR technology. The good thing is that, you can switch it to the stereoscopic mode so you can enjoy the 360 degrees virtual tour using your Google Cardboard too. The interesting exhibits are like the skeleton of American mastadon, the cool T-Rex and other dinosaurs from the Jurassic age…

URL : https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour

6) Rijksmuseum with Museum VR Tour

This national museum of Netherlands also offer the virtual tour and it seems they take it very serious. With the tagline “ From Home: We bring the museum to you “, they also provide some gamification elements in it such as the challenge to find keys, discover hidden words and you can also win prize for it. That’s really awesome initiative.

URL : https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/from-home

7) National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

This famous museum in Korea offers the VR tour with title “ How to create a landscape “. It also comes with realistic 3D model of the gallery that you can play around like a doll house. Moreover, if you want to view in in VR mode, they highly recommend using Oculus Quest. But they also support Oculus Go and other headsets that include controllers.

URL : https://www.mmca.go.kr/eng/pr/movDetail.do?mbMovCd=01

8) The National Gallery, London

The National Gallery in London offers the virtual tours to let you explore their greatest collection of paintings through your VR headset, desktop or smartphone. Moreover, they have the panoramic view of the gallery in 360 degrees by collaborating with Google Street View. And they also have the “Sainsbury Wing VR Tour” where you can experience the collection of over 270 Early Renaissance paintings from year 1200 to 1500. In addition, the gallery and Oculus teamed up using Matterport’s 3D camera technology to produce this virtual tour.

URL : https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtual-tours

9) Picasso Museum of Barcelona

This museum offer the 360-degrees tour to its courtyard and you can observe the details of the patios of the museum. Unfortunately, the only downside is that you need to download and enable the Adobe Flash Player first which the product itself is no longer supported by Adobe after 31st December 2020. Hope the museum will upgrade the technology soon.

URL : http://courtyard.museupicassobcn.org/

10) The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)

This gallery in Melbourne, Australia also provide the virtual tour of their exhibition by using the Matterport’s technology. It is an interactive self-guided tours that you can enjoy from your home. Their recommendation is to use Oculus Quest to fully enjoy it.

URL : https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/

11) Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum has the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit and is located in western North America. It also offers the 360 virtual tour where you can explore the underground tomb and witness the Alchemy Garden.

URL : https://egyptianmuseum.org/360-museum-tour

12) Nikola Tesla Museum

Nikola Tesla, a great inventor, electrical engineer and mechanical engineer, also got his own museum.  It is the only museum that preserve the original and personal legacy of that legendary figure in science world. You can explore the 3D interactive view of Nikola Tesla’s lab on Long Island. Build using Web VR, you can also watch it in the stereoscopic VR mode.

URL : https://nikolateslamuseum.org/en/virtual/longisland/

13) National Museum United States Air Force

This virtual tour of US Air Force museum has many cool exhibits related with aviation and planes. And it also shows the planes that it used in the World War 2 as well. Because of that, it is a good place to visit for the military or army veterans.

URL : http://www.nmusafvirtualtour.com/

14) The Dalí Theatre-Museum

This museum in Spain is dedicated to Salvador Dalí , who is the famous surrealist artist in the world. You can visit the museum virtually to appreciate his works, sculptures and masterpieces.

URL : https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/museums/dali-theatre-museum-in-figueres/visita-virtual/

15) The State Hermitage Museum

This museum located in St. Petersburg, Russia, has a vast amount of artwork on display. Furthermore, that includes the work by Rembrandt, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Moreover, they take the Hermitage virtual tour very seriously where it covers nearly all part of the museum and it’s very, very comprehensive tour. You can imagine it by looking at the map below and it is just the First Floor! You gonna get shock to see the number of circles in the Second Floor 🙂

URL : https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/panorama/virtual_visit/panoramas-m-1/?lng=en

16) The Egyptian Museum

This museum in Cairo is the oldest archaeological museum in the Middle East. Furthermore, it has the largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities in the world. Moreover, in one of the Egyptian Museum virtual tours, it gives us opportunity to see the iconic mask of the Golden Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. In addition, the discovery of the Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 was one of the most spectacular moment in the history of archeology.

URL : https://egymonuments.gov.eg/news/a-virtual-tour-through-the-tutankhamun-collection-at-the-egyptian-museum/

17) The Natural Museum History, London

This very famous museum located in London is very popular with the display of a big blue whale skeleton named Hope. Furthermore, the skeleton is so big and estimated to be 82-foot long. The museum also showcases the valuable pieces collected by Charles Darwin as well.

Secondly, with many life and earth science specimens under it roof, no wonder that it is the most visited natural history museum in Europe. Lastly, from the site, it looks like the Natural Museum History virtual tour is leveraging a lot on the Google Arts and Culture platform.

URL : https://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/virtual-museum.html

18) Science Museum, London

This museum in London has over 350,000 objects and archives from the collection of its group. The collection come from many areas such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. Due to its popularity, it is estimated there around five millions visitors each year coming to the museum. Finally, for its virtual tour, the Science Museum leverage on the Google Streetview to deliver it.

URL : https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/virtual-tour-science-museum

19) The Museum of Flight

This museum in Seattle dedicated itself with the history of aircraft. Its virtual tour enable us to see the inside of some of the iconic planes. In addition, you’ll be able to access the cockpits and interiors of the aircraft as well. For those planes that involve in war, you can also observe the gunner position as well.

Moreover, some brand of the aircrafts are like Antonov, Boeing, Concorde and Douglas. There is also the iconic presidential jet plane which is “Air Force One” that is using Boeing VC-137B as well. The museum uses Matterport 3D, 360 Photosphere and also WebGL to deliver the virtual tour to us.

URL : https://museumofflight.org/Explore-The-Museum/Virtual-Museum-Online

20) The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC)

Located in England, this museum is dedicated to the world of computer or computing technology. It is the home to the largest collection of working historic computers since the 1940s. It is since the era of Turing-Welchman Bombe and Colossus where the size of computer and mainframes during that time was so gigantic. Furthermore, it is estimated there are around 50,000 artefacts in their collection.

URL : https://www.tnmoc.org/3d-virtual-tour

21) Bank Negara Malaysia

For this banking museum in Malaysia, it dedicated itself on the financial and economic exhibits. It also offers the virtual trip to its museum where you’ll be able to view it in 360 degrees format.

URL : http://www.museum.bnm.gov.my/v2/virtualmuseum/

22) Museum Nasional Indonesia

This national museum located in Jakarta, Indonesia, houses around 160,000 artifacts and exhibits. You also will be able to experience the virtual tour of the museum in 360 degrees view by using the browser or VR headset as well.

URL : https://www.museumnasional.or.id/virtual-tour

23) NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration)

NASA , the popular and outstanding space agency in the world, also provides the virtual tours to its centers such as Ames Research Center, Armstrong Flight Research Center, Glenn Research Center and many more. Besides the research center, you can also ‘visit’ their other facilities, laboratories and operations control centers too.

URL: NASA at Home – Virtual Tours and Apps

24) Boston Children’s Museum

Founded in 1913, this museum is the second oldest and one of the largest children’s museum in the world. The exhibits of the museum focus on science, culture, environmental awareness, arts, health and fitness. It is estimated around 50,000 artifacts in the museum’s collection.

URL : https://bostonchildrensmuseum.org/museum-virtual-tour

25) International Spy Museum

For those that seeks the thrill of spy and espionage world, then this museum might be just suitable for you. Located in Washington DC, the International Spy Museum dedicated itself in the research, exhibitions and educational programming in the world of secret intelligence and espionage. It has the largest collection of international espionage artifacts ever placed on public display.

URL : https://www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-experiences/virtual-tours/

26) Bonus: More Famous Museum VR Tour at Google Arts & Culture

According to Google, there are over 2,000 famous museums that you can explore online. You can visit it at https://artsandculture.google.com/partner . That’s really impressive!! We try one of them and able to tour the museum in 360 degrees and also able to zoom in and zoom out.

To make it more real, you can download the Google Arts & Culture app on Android or iOS and view it using the virtual reality viewer like Google Cardboard. When you are already inside the museum’s page, you need to go down to the “Virtual Tours” section and click on a tour to experience it in VR…

In case if there is any more interesting museum VR tour, we will update the list accordingly. And lastly, for your information, the wonderful image above is by just-pics from Pixabay .

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I am a guy who is very excited on anything and everything related with virtual reality. My mission is to spread the love of VR to the world.

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The 13 best virtual museum tours in the world

Hands up – who is missing art ? While in early 2021 we can only dream of visiting exhibitions in far-flung destinations, we can experience the next closest thing: being transported to world-class museums and galleries, via European courtyards and faraway sculpture gardens, and lose ourselves in virtual tours and talks. Google Arts and Culture has also collaborated with a whole load of venues to place viewers right at the heart of the action. Here are the 13 virtual museum tours to take now.

LOUVRE, PARIS

Initially hesitant to take part in the Covid-induced digitisation that many galleries around the world have launched over the past year, the Louvre has finally succumbed to demand. While not technically offering a virtual tour, the world’s biggest museum has put almost its entire collection online – that’s more than 480,000 works of art. They're available to view for free on the new platform, Louvre Collections, which is updated on a daily basis. Explore by collection and filter to discover some of the world’s most precious paintings, as well as sculptures, inscriptions, objects, textiles and artists until we are able to travel to France and re-experience the museum in all its 4D glory. collections.louvre.fr

Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums, Rome

It may just be that you had always intended to go to Rome and marvel at Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling masterpiece, instead of seeing it endlessly replicated in the media, but you somehow never got round to it. Here you can place yourself in the chapel, which is inside the pope’s official palace residence, and get a more complete impression of how it would be for real. You can even take a tour guide option to wander around the Vatican City and really ramp up the virtual experience. museivaticani.va

NASA, Washington DC

Who isn’t fascinated by NASA and space? Short of getting on a plane to Washington DC (which you can’t do even if you wanted to), this experience gives a glimpse into how the US government agency that deals with National Aeronautics and Space Administration operates. There’s some incredible video footage on it’s website’s Galleries page of test-firing launch systems and missions to the moon, plus you can see a number of exhibitions online via Google Arts and Culture. artsandculture.google.com

Natural History Museum, London

There’s pretty much something for everyone at the Natural History Museum: a 360-degree tour of the Fantastic Beasts exhibition, a gallery full of extraordinary Photographer of the Year images, as well as an up-close experience with Hope the blue whale – with audio guides by the reassuringly knowledgeable Sir David Attenborough . Our top tip: every Tuesday at 3pm you can spend time with a scientist online, and take part in interactive discussions. nhm.ac.uk

The National Gallery, London

If you missed the much-talked-about Titian: Love, Desire, Death exhibition when the National Gallery reopened its doors after the first lockdown in 2020, now is your chance to see the glorious works of the Italian Renaissance painter. There are also video highlights from the gallery’s considerable British collection with The Wonderful Everyday tour. While you’re there, sign up for the family half-term Zoom session (Monday 15 February 2021) on decoding paintings with the help of clues. nationalgallery.org.uk

The Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City

Frida Kahlo’s eventful life has been well documented – along with her eyebrows – but so have her unmistakable colourful masterpieces, from brilliant self portraits to original clothing designs. There is no place more fitting to view her work than in the house where she spent most of her years: La Casa Azul (the Blue House), which was set up as a museum after her death, as she wished. Through this virtual tour, which will transport you straight to Mexico , its possible to explore the house and gardens , as well as view a selection of Kahlo’s art. museofridakahlo.org.mx

Picasso Museum, Barcelona

A very uplifting way to bring a piece of Spain into your living room. Picasso was born in Málaga, but he spent many of his formative years in Barcelona , so many of his most important pieces are housed in this museum. A heady virtual stroll takes in works from his Blue and Rose periods, as well as his series of insightful reinterpretations of Velázquez’s Las Meninas . There are separate tours of the place’s pretty, plant-strewn courtyard and the various places where Picasso lived and worked. bcn.cat

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, USA

Big, bold flowers will forever be associated with O’Keeffe, along with her other distinctive American modernist works including paintings, sculptures and objects, in this collection entirely dedicated to the artist. You can take a virtual tour, and there are also some excellent online lectures and classes, such as drawing with colour, which is suitable for ages 12+, but make sure to book in advance. okeeffemuseum.org

The British Museum, London

No stone (literally) has been left unturned when it comes to exploring the British Museum from home, with a staggering 60-plus galleries to visit via Google Street View. Virtual collections on the museum site cover Oceania, with art and artefacts from the South Pacific islands , and a large selection of prints and drawings. Special online shows worth seeing, meanwhile, include the recent Arctic: Culture and Climate exhibition. artsandculture.google.com

Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, Spain

So in early 2021 you can't hop over to San Sebastián for some pintxos on a trip to Bilbao , but you will can see this brilliantly designed Frank Gehry museum with an interactive tour that shows a mesmerising video of a photographer catching a free runner scaling the outside of the building before exploring its outstanding modern art collection, with paintings by greats from Mark Rothko and Yves Klein to Willem de Kooning and Anselm Kiefer. artsandculture.google.com

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

This powerhouse of a gallery is home to too many Renaissance greats to mention, but its selection of curated tours goes some way to conjuring up the magic of the Uffizi experience – and the upside is you don’t have to queue behind hordes of visitors to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation or Botticelli’s The Birth Of Venus . You can look up paintings or take a virtual stroll through various parts of the museum, and there are also video stories on lesser-known artists and educational projects. uffizi.it

The Vasa Museum, Stockholm

The behemoth Vasa ship, seen on entering this museum in Stockholm in real life, is one of the most striking pieces of history in the city, and it remains the best preserved example of a 17th-century vessel worldwide – retrieved after it sank in harbour waters in 1628. The audio guides online go through the history of the ship, along with realistic background sounds of the moment it sank, as well as up-close images and a historical timeline of events. stockholm360.net

Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

Anne Frank’s name is indelibly inked in history books as a result of her evocative World War II diaries, published after her death. This is a fascinating, if unsettling, tour around the museum dedicated to her attic hiding place, where she stayed to escape from the Nazis – something she managed until she was found and transported to a concentration camp, aged just 15. The site also has photographic footage of her childhood, along with extracts from her diaries. annefrank.org

MOMA, New York

Manhattan ’s awe-inspiring museum of modern art has a huge online display of work, from paintings and design to sculpture, architecture and film, including virtual views of Van Gogh’s Starry Night , the Surrealist Women exhibition and the gallery's Sculpture Garden. The New York, Open City video is a must for an immersive and historic NY experience. If you sign up to MOMA’s newsletter you can be updated on specific virtual events and live Q&As. moma.org

Now watch a tour around Milan's Fondazione Prada:

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50 World-Class Museums You Can Visit Online for Free

Scoping out some museums for art-inspired travel? There are some amazing museums you can visit online at home from the comfort of your couch or computer.

These days, many world class museums have released some or all of their collections online. Or they’ve partnered with Google Arts & Culture to make collections accessible in high resolution.

Some museums have used the technology that powers Google Street View to let you zoom in to see floor plans or specific art works.

If you can’t travel for any reason, this is a splendid time to travel virtually to a museum of your choice. There’s an almost dizzying array of virtual options.

It’s not quite like walking through a museum. But it has its own strange pleasures.

Online Museums For At Home Viewing

Here’s my list of virtual tours for 50 amazing museums:

1. Uffizi Gallery, Florence Italy

Art lovers are rushing to the Virtual Uffizi Gallery Facebook page. Launched in 2020, the page already has over 50,000 followers.

The Uffizi is one of Europe’s best museums, housing priceless treasures of Italian Renaissance art collected by the powerful Medici family. The Uffizi has the world’s best collection of Gothic and Renaissance art.

This is where you can admire Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Primavera , Laocoön and his Sons , and Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals .

Install the Google Arts & Culture App to explore the entire collection .

Here’s my comprehensive guide to the Uffizi Gallery and my must know Uffizi tips to prepare for your museum visit.

2. British Museum, London England

In London’s artsy Bloomsbury area is one the world’s foremost museums, the British Museum .

Opened in 1753, it’s a universal museum, holding a massive collection of the world’s most important historic artifacts. It seeks to provide a cross cultural understanding of art owned by “humanity.”

But it’s owned by humanity in name only. Many of the goodies on display date from England’s reign as a major world super power.

It’s utterly amazing how much stuff the Brits gobbled up, with their obsessive fervor for quirky collecting. Like the hotly disputed Elgin Marbles taken from the Pantheon.

The British Museum allows virtual visitors 360 views of the Great Court, the ancient Rosetta Stone, and the Egyptian mummies. You can also find hundreds of artifacts on the museum’s virtual tour that can be enlarged, with links to curator descriptions of the pieces.

3. Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City

Google’s Street View feature lets visitors virtually tour the Guggenheim’s famous spiral staircase designed by Frank Lloyd Wright .

From there, you can see incredible masterpieces from the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art periods.

Visit the museum’s popular online collection . There, you’ll find some of the Guggenheim’s most famous works, including Vasily Kandinsky’s Composition 8 (the most popular piece in 2019), Jackson Pollack’s Alchemy , and Edouard Manet’s Before the Mirror .

You can also check out the Guggenheim’s blog , with in-depth analyses of artists and art works.

4. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The National Gallery of Art is home to some of the most amazing paintings in the world. Plus, as a Smithsonian branch, it’s free to visitors.

But since you can’t visit right now, the museum features two online exhibits through Google. The first is an exhibit of American fashion from 1740 to 1895. The second is a collection of works from Johannes Vermeer, the famous Dutch Baroque painter.

The museum also has a rotating collection of museum highlights online. \The most famous pieces will wow you — Pablo Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques , da Vinci’s Portriat of Ginerva de’ Benci , Vincent Van Gogh’s Roses , Claude Monet’s Woman with a Parasol, and Mary Cassat’s The Boating Party.

For more information, here’s my complete guide to the National Gallery .

5. Musée d’Orsay, Paris France

Ah, this is one of my favorite museums in Paris , housed in a beautiful converted railway station.

If you can’t visit the museum, you can virtually see dozens of famous works from French and European artists who toiled in Paris between 1848 and 1914. You’ll see artworks from Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and so many other artists.

In particular, the d’Orsay is a Van Gogh treasure trove. You can inspect his Self Portrait, Starry Night, Dr. Gachet , The Church at Auvers , and The Siesta .

Other masterpieces at the d’Orsay include Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, Paul Cezanne’s Card Players , Claude Monet’s Houses of Parliament , and Auguste Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette .

Here’s my comprehensive guide to masterpieces of the Orsay and must know tips for visiting the Orsay .

6. Louvre, Paris France

The Louvre is Paris’ iconic landmark and the world’s most visited museum. This treasure trove of history is closed right now. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an arrangement with Google Arts & Culture.

But the Louvre does offer free virtual tours of some of its important exhibits, like the Egyptian Antiquities, Napoleon’s Rooms, the Medieval Louvre, and works by Michelangelo.

Via my blog, you can also explore the Louvre’s underrated masterpieces or take my virtual tour of the Louvre . I think the best painting in the Louvre , Theodore Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa .

If you’re a Beyonce fan, her recent music video featured pieces from the Louvre. Now, you can follow the Beyonce Louvre Trail .

READ : Louvre Survival Tips

7. Paris Museums Collections

In a collective effort, Paris museums have made 100,000 images of artworks from Paris museum collections freely available to the public.

This includes digital downloads of masterpieces by artists including Rembrandt, Gustave Courbet, and Eugène Delacroix.

Here’s the digital collections portal .

8. The Spy Museum, Washington D.C.

The Spy Museum is always a crowd pleaser. But if you’d like to avoid crowds, you can just visit online.

The Spy Museum gives you 360 degrees views of every room. It’s also got an amazing Pinterest account , featuring photos of its precious artifacts.

The Spy Museum even has a list online of the 10 most important pieces in its collection, including the Enigma Machine that Germany used in WWII to secretly communicate.

9. The Vatican Museums, Vatican City

I recently visited the Vatican Museums twice during a trip to Rome . The Vatican Museums are the public art and sculpture museums in the Vatican City complex.

The works in the Vatican are invaluable crowning glories of Western art. They tell stories of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the history of the Catholic Church, and the birth of the Renaissance.

You can take an online virtual tour of the Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel , the Pio Clementino Museum, and the Raphael Rooms .

I’ve also quite a few pieces on in which you can check out the art work:

• Vatican’s must see masterpieces
• Raphael Rooms  
• Hidden gems of the Vatican
• Best sculptures in the Vatican
• Sistine Chapel in the Vatican

10. The Dali Theater Museum, Figueres Spain

This is a delightfully eccentric single artist museum in Salvador Dali’s hometown of Figueres Spain.

Designed by Dali himself, the pink bread encrusted museum is a surrealistic object itself.

I’ve written a complete guide to the Dali Museum . But you can also see some of its most famous pieces online .

Check out the Mae West Room, the Labyrinth, the Rain Taxi, the courtyard of golden Oscar statues, and the painting of Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea (a clever double image).

11. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Netherlands

The Van Gogh Museum boasts the largest collection of paintings by the Post-Impressions master Vincent Van Gogh .

He’s an artist known for his colorful sunflowers, vivid landscapes, and searing portraits. Online, you can see panoramic views of the museum rooms.

The museum offers almost 1500 images of paintings to inspect. There’s also a 360 virtual tour of its Sunflower Gallery , with paintings from five international museums.

12. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Netherlands

If you love Dutch art, this is your chance to check out the preeminent source.

The Rijksmuseum is well represented on Google Arts & Culture, with 150,000 items on display.

You’ll find masterpieces by Rembrandt ( The Night Watch , The Jewish Bride ), Vermeer ( The Milk Maid) , and Franz Hals ( The Wedding Portrait ) on their virtual tours .

There’s also a Google Streets View of its grounds.

13. J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles

Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Meier, the world famous Getty Center in southern California opened to the public in 1997.

The Getty Museum has an outstanding online virtual tour with Google Arts & Culture. It even has an outdoor virtual tour , which uses photography and time-lapse videos to enliven the experience.

There are 15,000 paintings and artifacts to see with accompanying audio explanations.

Check out the Getty’s most famous pieces — Van Gogh’s Irises and Rembrandt Laughing , Renoir’s La Promenade , and the Lansdowne Herakles sculpture from Roman antiquity.

14. Museum of Modern Art, New York City US

The venerable MOMA boasts one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of modern and contemporary art in the world.

A $450 million expansion in 2019 added 45,000 square feet of space.

It was the first museum solely dedicated to modern art. It has 84,000 pieces art on display online .

It’s seminal masterpieces include works by Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and the ever popular Impressionists.

MOMA’s most famous piece is Van Gogh’s Starry Night .

15. Tate Modern, London England

The Tate Modern is my favorite museum in London, a city overflowing with marvelous free museums .

Opened in 2000, it’s housed in the former Bankside Power Station. The industrial look seems fitting for its cutting edge art.

Among other modern art masterpieces , you can clap your eyes on Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych , Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain , Amadeo Modigliani’s Peasant Boy , Pablo Picasso’s Nude Woman in a Red Armchair, Georgio de Chirico’s the Uncertainty of the Poet , and Henri Matisse’s The Snail, and Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone .

You can navigate the Tate Modern via Google Street View or explore its digitized masterpieces online . The Tate is to launch free online film tours of Andy Warhol (April 6) and Aubrey Beardsley (April 13) exhibitions on their YouTube channel .

16. National Gallery, London England

London’s National Gallery is an incredibly diverse museum, featuring 2,000 European paintings from the 13th to the 19th centuries.

You’ll find familiar names like Rembrandt, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, J.M.W. Turner, Monet, and Van Gogh.

READ : The Monet Guide To Paris

The most famous painting on display is Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks. But Van Gogh’s Sunflowers also draws hordes of admirers. Wherever you are, you can take a virtual tour .

Here’s my complete guide to the National Gallery .

17. The Prado Museum, Madrid Spain

The Prado Museum in Madrid is Spain’s cultural jewel. It boasts one of Europe’s finest and most sensuous painting collections.

The artistic anchors of the Prado are Francisco Goya, Diego Velázquez, and Peter Paul Rubens. But there are also masterpieces by Titian, Bosch, and El Greco.

Now you can Prado in your PJs. If you want to take a virtual tour of the Prado, you can. The Prado recently broadcast a live video in which its director, Miguel Falomir, gave a 20 minute talk on Tintoretto’s famed Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet .

The Prado also has a 360 virtual tour of its Rubens exhibition and an impressive online collection of over 10,000 works of art.

Smarthistory has a large cache of YouTube videos exploring many of the Prado’s best works. The Prado also does a live one hour show on Instagram, also posted on Facebook, every morning at 10:00 am.

Here’s my complete guide to visting the Prado .

18. The Reina Sofia, Madrid Spain

Opened in 1992, the Reina Sofia is Madrid’s modern art museum. Its collection is comprised entirely of art work from 1900 to the present.

There’s a special focus on Spain’s favorite sons, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali , and their respective schools of Cubism and Surrealism.

The star of the Reina Sofia is Guernica , Picasso’s grim depiction of the seemingly casual Nazi bombing of Guernica Spain in 1937.

The Reina Sofia recently tweeted a video showing the array of content it has online .

19. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid Spain

Housed in the Villahermosa Palace, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is named after art collector Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

The museum covers every major period in Western art, from 13th century Italian Renaissance to 20th century Pop Art. It also has an important collection of 19th century American paintings not found elsewhere in Europe.

The museum offers virtual visits to both its permanent collection and temporary exhibits. You can also browse through thematic tours that center on fashion, food, love, and wine.

READ : Best Art Museums in Spain

20. Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. US

Washington D.C.’s Museum of Natural History is one of the most visited museums in the world. You can inspect some of its wonderful treasures with an online virtual tour of the entire grounds.

Viewers head into its rotunda and receive a comprehensive 360 room by room walking tour of its most exceptional exhibits, including the Hall of Mammals, Insect Zoo, and Dinosaurs and Hall of Paleobiology.

In general, the Smithsonian museums have also released 2.8 million images into the public domain.

They’re searchable, shareable, and downloadable via the museum’s Open Access platform . The Smithsonian will continue to digitize and publish their collections.

21. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Russia

The State Hermitage is one of the world’s best museums. It’s the second largest museum in the world.

It’s so large that it’s impossible to tackle in one real life visit anyway. Instead, you can explore its artsy endless halls with the Google Art Project guide.

Alternatively, check out the Hermitage website , which boasts a large digital archive with very convenient navigation. In the Highlights section, you’ll find the Hermitage’s most significant pieces: Faberge eggs, sculptures, and jewelry.

Some of its world class paintings include Rembrant’s Danae and The Return of the Prodigal Son , Henri Matisse’s Dance , Titian’s Danae , and Kandinsky’s Composition VI .

Other Russian museums with significant online collections can be found here .

22. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon Portugal

If you’re pining for Portugal , Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum has excellent online viewing options.

Thanks to a wealthy oil magnate, this gem of a museum is stuffed with a stunning range of treasures spanning 4,000 years. It’s one of the world’s largest and best private art collections, compiled over 40 years.

The museum has a 360 tour of the Founder’s Collection and the Modern Collection galleries. It also has an extensive online collection .

READ : 4 Day Itinerary for Lisbon

23. Tate Britain, London England

The Tate Britain may be London’s most beautiful museum. It boasts a domed rotunda, beautiful spiral staircase, terrazzo floors, and Victorian details.

Built in the late 19th century, the Tate Britain underwent an extensive renovation completed in 2013. The result is an ultra pretty museum experience.

The Tate Britain is home to J. M. W. Turner’s watercolors and Francis Bacon’s abstract religious triptychs and screaming popes. Some of Tate Britain’s most famous paintings are here, including Sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia , John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott , and John Constable’s Flatford Mill.

Of special note, there are 8 rooms dedicated to Turner, one of Britian’s greatest and most famous artists.

And you can enjoy it all online with Google Arts & Culture. And you can check out my guide to the Tate Britain , with must see masterpieces.

24. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City US

The Met is the largest museum in the United States. It has an extremely good online collection . There are over 200,000 works on Google Arts & Culture.

The Met also offers a 360 tour , consisting of 6 videos. The tour showcases different spaces inside the Met from unique angles.

Check out the Met’s best pieces — Georgia O’Keefe’s Cow’s Skull , Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with a Straw Hat , Monet’s Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies , Jacques Louis David’s The Death of Socrates , and Antonio Canova’s famous sculpture Venus Italica .

25. The Capitoline Museums, Rome Italy

If you love ancient Greco-Roman sculpture, the Capitoline Museums have a virtual tour of its floorplans and collections. You can also examine its exhibits on Google Arts & Culture .

The Capitoline Museums is Rome’s oldest museum complex, sitting atop a beautiful Michelangelo-designed square, the Piazza dei Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill.

It gives you a unique look at Rome’s ancient imperial history. If you’re a history or archaeology buff, this is a must see site in Rome .

The Capitoline Museum boasts an enormous array of ancient Roman, medieval, and Renaissance art — statuary, paintings, and relics. The most famous pieces are the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius , Dying Gaul , Medusa , Capitoline Venus , Spinario , and Bust of Commodus .

Here’s my complete guide to the Capitoline Museums .

26. Ara Pacis | Museum of the Altar of Peace, Rome Italy

The Ara Pacis Museum is dedicated to a single item — an ancient arch dedicated to the gods.

The arch was built by soon-to-be emperor Augustus, who had just pacified the barbarians.

This victory marked the beginning of the Pax Roman, a 200 year golden age where arts and architecture flourished.

Opened in 2006, the altar-museum is housed in a modern pavilion designed by American architect Richard Meier.

Examine all the intricacies of the altar with the museum’s virtual tour here .

27. The Acropolis Museum, Athens Greece

In 2009, Athens opened a gorgeous new museum, the Acropolis Museum.

Designed by French-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, it’s a $200 million state of the art rebuttal to the British Museum’s claim that Athens had nowhere to properly store and display the Elgin Marbles , disputed statuary from the Parthenon’s frieze.

The Acropolis Museum recreated the Parthenon friezes for display. It’s also home to 5,0000 year old artifacts excavated from the Acropolis, home to the Parthenon.

Both the ruins and the neighboring museum are free to explore virtually on Google Maps .

READ : One Day In Athens Itinerary

28. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples Italy

Located in the Capodimonte Palace, the Capodimonte Museum houses a collection of fine and decorative arts mostly from Naples. The core of its collection was compiled by the powerful Farnese and Bourbon families.

The Capodimonte has works by Caravaggio, Masaccio, Titian, Raphael, El Greco, Bruegel, and Sebastiano del Piombo (who also decorated the Villa Farnesina in Rome).

The museum’s most famous painting is probably The Gypsy Madonna by Correggio. You can visit the museum’s online collection here .

Thanks to the museum’s collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, the cultural and artistic gems of the Capodimonte Museum can be admired online from home.

The online Google Art & Culture platform contains over 536 works of art. The Google Street View tool allows visitors to enjoy 14 themed stories and virtual tours of museum masterpieces.

29. Picasso Museum, Barcelona Spain

Founded in 1963, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona was launched with a donation of 574 works by Picasso’s secretary, Jaime Sabartés. In 1970, Picasso himself donated 800 more pieces to the museum.

In this museum, you’ll find one of the most extensive collections of his work, 4000 pieces, certainly the best collection in Spain. The best part of the museum is where it’s housed — in five glorious adjoining medieval palaces.

You can browse the highlights of the museum’s online collection here , though the images are rather small. You can take a virtual tour of the palaces here . The palace tour takes you on a private guided tour of the museum’s architectural elements.

If you’d like more Picasso, here’s my guide to the Picasso museums in Europe and my guide to the Picasso Museum in Paris .

30. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston MA

Ah, this is one of my favorite museums in the United States. If you’re a museum or art lover, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a must see site in Boston Massachusetts . I just adored it.

The museum houses gorgeous paintings from the Italian Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age in an exquisite Venetian-style palazzo. The collection was assembled by Gardner herself, who was a wealthy maverick and avid art collector.

Gardner carefully curated and installed her collection amid the three floors of intimate gallery spaces and the interior courtyard with a skylit roof. Each room is named and sumptuously decorated.

In effect, the museum is a total work of art with Gardner as the installation artist. You’ll find pieces by John Singer Sargent, Rembrandt, Francisco Zurburan, Titian, and Sandro Botticelli.

Here’s my guide to the Gardner Museum . You can also take a virtual tour through Google Arts & Culture . If you’ve never watched the fascinating introductory video on the museum’s homepage , now’s the perfect time.

31. Musee de L’Orangerie, Paris France

Paris’ Musée de l’Orangerie, or the Orangerie Museum, is one of the best small museums in Paris .

It’s a quick 10 minute walk from its more popular sister museum the Musée D’Orsay. And it’s completely worth the detour, a hidden gem in Paris just waiting for avid fans of the Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

The Orangerie’s main claim to fame is its famed collection of Monet’s water lilies, some of which can also be found at the equally stunning Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris’ 16th arrondissement.

In 1927, the water lilies were set in massive curved panels and installed in two adjoining oval shaped rooms in the new museum. Some art historians call the Orangerie the world’s first “art installation” because the space was designed specifically for Monet’s water lilies.

Here’s my complete guide to the Orangerie . You can also visit the museum masterpieces virtually on Google Arts & Culture.

32. Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao Spain

Who can argue with the emblematic Guggenheim Museum ? Inaugurated in 1997, Frank Gehry’s twisting shimmering museum is the star of the underrated city of Bilbao Spain .

The space age building is an awe-inspiring blend of titanium, glass, and limestone. The scaly exterior evokes a silvery fish and the wings of the building the wind-filled sails of a ship.

Outside, there’s a veritable sculpture museum. Inside, the Guggenheim’s modern art collection is on par with Europe’s best modern art museums. You’ll find works by Robert Motherwell, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Eduardo Chillada, and Anselm Kiefer.

Via Google Arts & Culture, you can explore the Guggenheim Bilbao. The online offering includes cinematographic photos, videos, and guided tours of masterpieces from the collection.

READ : 2 Day Itinerary for Bilbao

33. Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh PA

This wonderful single artist museum celebrates Pittsburgh’s hippest native son, who made himself a world famous Pop artist.

As the Prince of Pop, Andy Warhol was a hugely significant artist of the second half of the 20th century. Warhol cannily merged superficial commerce and fine art, popularizing robotic everyday images.

Opened in 1994, the Andy Warhol Museum is a chic urban venue. It’s an immersive and well curated museum.

The museum has 7 floors in chronological order. You’ll see seminal works from the 1940s to Warhol’s death in 1987, with explanations of Warhol’s creative process.

The Warhol Museum has some of its art and archives online here . You can read about Warhol’s life here .

If you want to see more Warhol work, you can read my guide to the Warhol Museum and find other Warhol’s pieces on Google Arts & Culture .

34. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL

The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the best, and incredibly diverse, museums in the United States. It has the best collection of Impressionist paintings outside Paris and a spectacular modern art section.

The museum’s standout masterpieces include Grant Wood’s American Gothic , Georges Seurat’s Sunday on La Grand Jatte , Andy Warhol’s Liz #3 , Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks , Joan Mitchell’s City Landscape 1955, and Monet’s Stacks of Wheat.

You can now tour the renowned museum on Google Arts & Culture . If you’re interested in interiors, take a virtual tour of the Thorne Miniature Rooms.

If you want to explore ancient Roman ruins, there are over a 1,000 pieces online , including a noseless bust of Emperor Hadrian.

35. Museo Napoleonico, Rome Italy

Housed in the Palazzo Primoli, this Roman museum is dedicated to the period of Napoleon and his connection to Italy. Located just north of the Piazza Navona, the museum contains the collections of Count Giuseppe Primoli. He was the great grandson of Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte.

Primoli’s aim was to present the imperial family from his own private point of view. The museum is still arranged as he envisioned it.

You’ll find painting, artifacts, sculptures, Napoleon’s outfits, books, memorabilia, etc. If you’re a history buff, this museum is for you.

The Museo Napoleonico has an excellent multimedia virtual tour . You can take a 360 tour of the collection. Or you can go to the photo gallery, click on a specific photo, and get a wealth of information.

36. The Doge’s Palace, Venice Italy

Set in St. Mark’s Square, the Doge’s Palace or Palazzo Ducale is the very symbol of Venice and a must see site in the city .

This pink and white marble Gothic-Renaissance building was the official residence of the doges who ruled Venice for more than 1,000 years. It was held Casanova in a cell, but he dramatically escaped

Aside from the gorgeous rooms and staircases, there’s some fantastic works of art on display: Veronese’s Rape of Europe and The Triumph of Venice, many paintings and ceilings by Tintoretto, and Tiepolo’s Neptune Bestowing Gifts upon Venice .

You can tour the Doge’s Palace virtually on Google Arts & Culture , take a 360 tour of the exterior, or take a 360 tour of the city of Venice itself.

READ : 2 Day Itinerary for Venice

37. The Belvedere Palace, Vienna Austria

The Belvedere Palace is one of Vienna’s most visited tourist spots and an important UNESCO site for its showy architectural ensemble. The Belvedere is also one of Europe’s most important museums.

The Belvedere’s a haven of Baroque and Austrian art from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Its main claim to fame is the world’s largest collection of Gustav Klimt paintings, including the world famous The Kiss . It also boasts masterworks by Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, two important Expressionist painters.

Here’s my complete guide to visiting the Belvedere Palace . You can also tour it virtually on Google Arts & Culture . There’s also an online exhibit dedicated to The Kiss .

If you like Klimt’s gold toned art nouveau pieces, I also have a guide on where to find Klimt art work in Vienna .

38. Alte Pinakothek, Munich Germany

Munich’s most touted museum is the Alte Pinakothek . The museum shows off a collection of European masterpieces from the 14th to 19th centuries.

You’ll see a goodly number of paintings from the Italian Renaissance, including works by da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, and Titian.

You’ll also find Albrecht Durer’s mysterious Self Portrait, and other old master treasures.

You can virtually tour the Alte Pinakothek online at Google Arts & Culture , where they have a massive collection. I also like this Rick Steve’s video about the museum.

READ : 4 Day Itinerary for Munich

39. Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, Seville Spain

The Museo de Bellas Artes , or Museum of Fine Arts, is a smashing museum, quite lovely. It’s known, after the Prado, as the “second art gallery in Spain.” It’s housed in a salmon colored former convent in Seville Spain .

The museum has art from the middle ages to the 20th century. But it’s most known for its collection of 17th century art from Spain’s Golden Age, featuring Spain’s top painters Zurbarán, Murillo, El Greco, and Velazquez. You’ll see a lot of monks, balding saints, cherubs, and depictions of Christ.

You can take a virtual tour of the Seville Museum of Fine Arts’ masterpieces on Google Arts & Culture . There are excellent online exhibits on Baroque masters and on the museum’s superstar Murillo .

40. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao Spain

Often overshadowed by the famous Guggenheim Bilbao, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao is nonetheless one of Spain’s best museums. If you’re an art lover, you should definitely visit in person one day.

Located in Bilbao’s Abando neighborhood, the museum boasts over 10,000 art works, arranged chronologically from the 12th century to the present.

It has works by Spanish artists Picasso , Goya , El Greco, Zurbaran, and Chillada, as well as many international artists.

You can explore the collection of the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts on Google Arts & Culture .

41. Musee Rodin, Rodin Museum, Paris France

Opened in 1919, the Rodin Museum is a shrine to the complex life and oeuvre of one of France’s most revered artists, Auguste Rodin .

Rodin is considered the father of modern sculpture. Rodin’s titular museum is housed in the 18th century Hotel Biron, a romantic mansion where Rodin created some of his greatest works.

The museum’s permanent collection includes many iconic Rodin sculptures and works from Rodin’s brilliant student Camille Claudel .

The Rodin Museum also has a vast and verdant sculpture garden. In it, Rodin hand placed some of his favorite and most iconic sculptures.

The Rodin Museum has added some online audio tours. You can take a virtual tour of his famous sculpture The Thinker , read stories about Rodin’s life, and view and learn about 40 of the figures in his masterpiece The Gates of Hell .

You can also explore over 300 Rodin sculptures on Google Arts & Culture . Here’s my complete guide to the Rodin Museum , if you want to know more.

42. Musée National Picasso, Picasso Museum, Paris France

Paris’ Picasso Museum is a fantastic single artist museum. It holds one of Paris’ most treasured art collections, shown off in an elegant private mansion in the Marais.

What I love most about the Picasso Museum is that it houses all the art that Picasso himself couldn’t part with. It’s a personal collection that he created, curated, lived with, and kept nearby his entire life.

The museum showcases all the artistic periods of his long life, all the women he romanced, and reveals his extraordinary range and talent.

Here’s an excellent series of audio tours of Picasso Museum masterpieces. The museum itself doesn’t yet have a very good online collection.

But you can check out virtual tours of the museum on YouTube here and here . Smarthistory offers 13 virtual tours of seminal Picasso works. And you get explore Picasso paintings on Google Arts & Culture .

Here’s my complete guide to visiting the Picasso Museum in Paris .

43. The Palace of Versailles, Versailles France

The Palace of Versailles has opened its digital doors. Built by the Sun King Louis XIV, the Palace of Versailles is the most ornate and famous royal chateau in France, located just outside Paris.

Once behind closed doors, the 17th century palace is now yours for digital viewing at home.

The palace has partnered with Google Arts & Culture to present virtual exhibits online. Google takes users on a journey of the palace’s rich decor and art collection of over 22,000 pieces.

You can also take a plethora of amazing virtual tours on the Palace of Versailles’ website . Nothing is left out! You can see the Hall of Mirrors, the royal apartments, tour the famous Le Notre gardens, etc.

For the full scoop on everything you can see and read online, here’s my guide to taking a digital tour of the Palace of Versailles .

44. Bernardo Museum | Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon Portugal

The Bernardo Museum is Lisbon’s modern art museum. Located in the Belem district, it’s a fabulous museum with over 1,000 works from the 20th and 21st centuries.

The ultra-white, minimalist gallery displays billionaire José Berardo’s eye-popping collection of abstract, surrealist and pop art.

It includes art work by such luminaries as David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, and Willem de Kooning. Picasso’s early Tete de Femme from 1909 and Warhol’s iconic Brillo Box are highlights.

You can take virtually visit the museum on Google Arts & Culture. And here’s a 360 virtual tour where you can admire the art up close.

45. Cluny Museum, the National Museum of the Middle Ages, Paris France

Are you a history buff who wants to be transported back to the late Middle Ages? Or are you, like everyone else it seems, just crazy for mythical unicorns? If so, the Musée Cluny is a must see site in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

It’s truly one of my favorite museums in Paris. The museum’s housed in the Hotel de Cluny, built in the 14th century and adjacent to an extant Roman bath.

The Cluny Museum is dedicated to all things from the Middle Ages. Its centerpiece is the famous Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. They’re considered the Mona Lisa of tapestries and one of the greatest surviving medieval relics.

You can take a virtual YouTube tour of the museum here . And here’s a 360 tour of the beautiful museum. You can also check out my guide to the Cluny .

46. The Petit Palais, Paris France

Like its sister palace the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais was built for Paris’ 1900 World Fair. It became a museum in 1902. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style by famous architect Charles Girault, the Petit Palais is a charming small museum.

It houses French paintings, sculpture, and artifacts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Petit Palais collection includes artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Fragonard, Delacroix, Cézanne, Courbot, Corot, Monet, Rodin, Sisley, Pissarro, and many others. There’s also a section dedicated to Roman and Greek art.

Though the museum isn’t on Google Arts & Culture, it has a very good online collection for you to explore.

You can also virtually visit its current temporary exhibition, In the Drawing Room , featuring Masterpieces of the Prat Collection. And here’s a YouTube video of the museum’s collection.

For more information, here’s my guide to the Petit Palais .

47. Palazzo Barberini | Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome Italy

Palazzo Barberin i is an underrated museum in Rome. But it’s definitely an art lover’s art gallery.

Recent restorations give it an unapologetically grand wow factor. The museum holds some of Europe’s classic paintings by the great masters.

The Barberini Palace is 12,000 square meters and has 187 rooms. It has beautiful staircases by Borromini and Bernini.

It’s home to one of Raphael’s most famous paintings, La Fornarina . It’s a painting of the “baker’s daughter,” whom Raphael had fallen in love with while fresco painting in the Villa Farnesina.

Other master works include Caravaggio’s Narcissus and Judith and Holofernes , Holbein’s Henry VIII , and the ceiling fresco by Pietro da Cortona.

You can take a live tour with a museum guide here , a virtual tour with a museum curator on YouTube here , and get a 360 view of the current exhibit on Claude Monet here .

You can also check out my guide to the Palazzo Barberini .

READ : Secret Palace Museums in Rome

48. Louis Vuitton Foundation

Inaugurated in 2014, the Louis Vuitton Foundation houses the collection of Bernard Arnault.

It’s a chic little museum tucked into a stunning Frank Gehry designed glass building located in the Bois de Bologne. The Foundation houses modern and contemporary art from the 1960s to the present.

The museum’s permanent collection showcases Pop, Expressionistic, and Contemplative pieces. You’ll find masterpieces by the likes of Egon Schiele, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Henri Matisse, and Ellsworth Kelly. The foundation hosts temporary exhibits as well.

You can take a virtual tour here . Or read my guide to the Louis Vuitton Fondation .

49. NASA Headquarters

If you geek out on science, you’ll be pleased to know that NASA offers virtual tours of its research centers. Their extensive virtual tours combine videos, text, and 360 degree views. You may feel like you’re on a school field trip.

Here are some virtual tours from NASA worth exploring:

NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, USA

NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia

The Space Telescope Operations Control Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Ma

If you’d like to tour world class museums online, pin it for later.

1 thought on “50 World-Class Museums You Can Visit Online for Free”

Thank you for this wonderful list! I missed seeing the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Albertina, both in Vienna, and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. I have visited many of these museums on your list and I am very excited to go through each entry with a little more time to spend. Thank you again for this fine list!

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2,500 Museums You Can Now Visit Virtually

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Inside the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (Tomasz Baranowski/ Flickr )

There’s no point in sugarcoating it — things are bad and they’re about to get worse before they get any better. COVID-19 virus has brought the world to a halt, shuttering all art and cultural institutions in affected countries, and putting millions worldwide in quarantine, self-imposed or not. Meanwhile, if you’re feeling hungry for art while you’re stranded at home, you might be pleased to know that 2,500 world-class museums and galleries are now offering virtual tours and online collections on Google’s Arts & Culture pages. (And for opera fans, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City is streaming concerts for free .)

Google Arts & Culture’s collection includes many of the world’s biggest museums: Tate Modern and the British Museum in London, the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in NYC, among hundreds of others. In most, you can browse through entire exhibitions online, and in many, you can also walk through the museum using Google’s street view .

Here are 12 museums that you can visit virtually right now:

Guggenheim Museum, New York

See online exhibitions like  But a Storm Is Blowing From Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa  and The Little-Known Glass Works of Josef Albers   here and virtually tour the building here (you’d save yourself $25).

British Museum, London

Tour the museum’s Great Court and discover the ancient Rosetta Stone here .

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Get a close look at the works of Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and hundreds of other French painters here .

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Walk among Vermeer, Rembrandt, and many more masters from the Dutch Golden Age here .

Pergamon Museum, Berlin

The Pergamon is one of Germany’s largest museums and it’s home for the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and the Greek Pergamon Altar. Visit it here .

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

Catch up on the best of contemporary art from Korea here .

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Explore an exhibition of American fashion from 1740 to 1895 and a collection of Vermeer paintings here .

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Here is where you can find the largest collection of artworks by van Gogh, including more than 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and over 750 personal letters.

Louvre, Paris

The Louvre doesn’t need Google to create online tours for itself. It has its own virtual tours , thank you very much.

MASP, São Paulo

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo is Brazil’s first modern art museum. Do visit it here .

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Travel back in time to the 8th century with this collection of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European, Asian, and American photographs.  

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Italy was hit hardest by the virus in Europe. Show some solidarity and pay this magnificent gallery a visit .

And, finally, enjoy this short walkthrough of the 2019 exhibition No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), courtesy the artist themself.

If you’re stuck at home and looking to visit a virtual museum, here’s a quick lo-fi walkthrough of my retrospective No Wrong Holes: https://t.co/4zmoS3M06E via @YouTube — Nayland Blake (@naylandblake) March 15, 2020

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Hakim Bishara

Hakim Bishara is a Senior Editor at Hyperallergic. He is a recipient of the 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation and Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant and he holds an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual... More by Hakim Bishara

4 replies on “2,500 Museums You Can Now Visit Virtually”

is there a list of the 2500 musuems?

This would be handy. Did you receive an answer Gilad Melzer?

Nearly all art museums (and presumably many other types) will let you browse through their collections on their websites. The best, though, are “virtual tours” that scale the works on the walls and give you a sense of being able to walk through the galleries and the ability to zero in on particular works of art that interest you. Brief interpretive texts or audio descriptions are often available for individual works, as well. Art has always held the capacity to take people out of their own problems and day-to-day concerns to focus on something other–consoling beauty for a start and distancing from what makes us unhappy or afraid. It teaches, too, if we remember to keep our minds as open as our eyes.

The Museum at FIT has beautiful images and information about our current exhibitions “Ballerina: Fashion’s Modern Muse,” “Power Mode,” and “Eleanor Lambert,” on FITNYC.edu/Museum We also have podcasts and videos.

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The 25 Best Virtual Museum Tours From Around the World

By: Author Leah Shoup

Posted on Published: September 11, 2020

The best cure for wanderlust when you can’t travel is to check out virtual options! After all, who could say no to visiting the world’s most famous museums? Thanks to the internet, you can see top-quality galleries, like the Louvre and the Vatican, without having to leave home. Not to mention, all of these online tours are free, too! So, whether you’re quarantining, self-isolating, or just low on travel funds, keep reading for the 25 best virtual museum tours from around the world. Each museum presents a wonderful opportunity to learn and about new cultures and to explore exciting destinations from home. What are you waiting for? Grab your favorite blanket, curl up on your comfiest couch, and get ready to see some of art’s greatest masterpieces.

The Louvre (Paris)

Photo by Patrick Langwallner on Unsplash

The Louvre is currently the most visited museum in the world, receiving approximately 10 million visitors each year. Especially if you’ve had to postpone a trip to Paris, you’ll want to check out its online tours. Some of the most popular pieces at this museum are the Mona Lisa , Venus de Milo , The Winged Victory of Samothrace , Liberty Leading the People , and The Raft of the Medusa . I particularly recommend the Closer Look multimedia modules , where curators explain the historical and artistic background of some of the Louvre’s best-known artwork.

Visit the Louvre website here for more information on online tours.

The British Museum (London)

The British Museum offers multiple ways to explore its corridors virtually, including Google Street View and the “History Connected” interactive tour (in collaboration with Google Cultural Institute). The former is a great way to get a feel for the museum, while the latter goes into much more detailed explanations of its contents. The most popular piece on display here is undoubtedly the Rosetta Stone , which allowed scholars to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Click here for the British Museum’s History Connected platform.

The National Gallery (London)

The National Gallery in London possesses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. Luckily, the museum offers three different ways to explore the gallery from the comfort of your home. First, you can appreciate some of the gallery’s Renaissance masterpieces via a Google Street View tour. However, if you’d like an even more immersive experience, you can take the virtual reality tour of the Sainsbury Wing . On your “visit”, don’t miss museum highlights, such as Doge Leonardo Loredan , The Arnolfini Portrait , and The Baptism of Christ . If you’d like to dive in even further, check out the full virtual tour of 18 rooms at the National Gallery.

Go to the National Gallery’s website here for the three virtual tours.

The Vatican Museums (Vatican City)

Everyone knows that the Sistine Chapel is rarely empty. For this reason, the Vatican’s online tours present a rare opportunity to experience its most popular attractions without the crowds! These 360-degree virtual tours cover Raphael’s Rooms, the Sistine Chapel, the New Wing, the Pio Clementino Museum, and more. Therefore, even if you’ve had to cancel your trip to Rome, you can still delight in the amazing collection at the Vatican.

Click here for the 360-degree virtual tours of the Vatican Museums.

The Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam)

Photo by Frans Ruiter on Unsplash

The Van Gogh Museum is home to the largest collection of Van Gogh works in the world, including 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 letters. If you’ve always dreamed of visiting, you’ll love the seven-part private video tour the museum created. During this tour, you’ll get a closer look at paintings like The Potato Eaters  (1885),  The Yellow House (1888), and Sunflowers  (1889). Additionally, for in-depth explanations of this artwork, head to Google Arts & Culture .

Enjoy the first part of the private video tour of the Van Gogh Museum here .

The State Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg)

The Hermitage Museum is the second-largest art museum in the world, with its pieces amounting to over 3 million items. A collection of this scale certainly merits a virtual visit ! Fortunately, the Hermitage Museum has created one of the most detailed online visits possible, where visitors can peruse the main complex, the treasure gallery, exhibition projects, and outdoor views. On your visit, you’ll recognize pieces from artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, El Greco, Rembrandt, and Picasso.

Click here to begin a virtual tour of the Hermitage Museum.

Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)

The Rijksmuseum is the largest and most visited museum in the Netherlands, with over 8,000 objects on display. With the new “ Masterpieces Up Close ” tour, visitors can see some of its most celebrated pieces via an online platform. Highlights include Vermeer’s The Milkmaid , Rembrandt’s The Night Watch , and Asselijn’s  The Threatened Swan.

Begin the “Masterpieces Up Close” tour of the Rijksmuseum here .

Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (Madrid)

The Thyssen Museum is located within Madrid’s “Golden Triangle of Art”, along with the Prado and the Reina Sofia galleries. This particular art collection encompasses almost 1000 paintings spanning from the 13th to the 20th centuries. As far as its virtual offerings, the Thyssen has created some of the most comprehensive online tours –which you can access via desktop, mobile device, or even with virtual reality glasses! Immerse yourself amongst masterpieces by Duccio, Carpaccio, Dürer, Caravaggio, Rubens, Sargent, and more.

Visit the Thyssen’s website here to view all options for free virtual tours.

Uffizi Gallery (Florence)

Photo by Matt Twyman on Unsplash

The Medici family’s prestigious art collection formed the base for the Uffizi Gallery, considered one of the first modern museums. Without a doubt, the Uffizi is one of the most popular attractions in Florence. Thanks to a recent initiative, visitors can now take a virtual tour of the museum’s new halls, which were restored and then opened in 2019. On the tour, you can spot some of the most important Venetian paintings from the 1500s. For example, you can find Venus of Urbino in its own room, Bronzino’s portraits of the Medici family, and Commodi’s Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Tour the 14 new rooms at the Uffizi Gallery here .

National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)

The National Gallery of Art is considered to be one of the greatest museums in the United States. Thankfully, we can still visit some of its many corridors from the comfort of homes! Right now, there are three different virtual tours available: True to Nature, Degas at the Opéra, and Raphael and His Circle. On the first tour, you’ll explore important works within open-air painting in Europe from 1780-1870. The next tour is fully dedicated to Edgar Degas’s fascination with the Opéra during 19th-century Paris. Finally, the Raphael virtual tour celebrates one of the world’s greatest figures in art, marking the 500th anniversary of his death.

Follow this link to begin the True to Nature tour, click here for the Degas at the Opéra tour, or begin the Raphael and His Circle tour here .

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C.)

The National Museum of Natural History’s collection contains over 145 million specimens, making it the largest natural history collection in the world. The museum is currently working on adding narrated virtual tours . Although there are only a few of these tours available on the website at the moment, I highly recommend checking them out. Moreover, to explore more of the museum on your own, you can take self-guided, room-by-room tours here . With this option, you can navigate through the current, permanent, and even past exhibitions to discover the museum’s specimens, artifacts, and remains.

Head to the National Museum of Natural History’s website here to begin your tour.

MoMA (New York City)

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is home to an incredible collection of modern and contemporary art. Some of its most celebrated pieces include The Starry Night , The Persistence of Memory , Les Demoiselles d’Avignon , and The Sleeping Gypsy , among countless others. There are two main options to visit MoMA virtually: via Google Arts & Culture or during one of the museum’s Virtual Views on selected Thursdays.

Check out MoMA’s past Virtual Views here .

Tate Britain (London)

Photo by Miguel Sousa on Unsplash

Tate Britain is one of the largest museums in the U.K., holding the national collection of British art from 1500 to the present day. The rooms at Tate are arranged chronologically, showing off the country’s greatest artists by decade. In the Tate virtual tour , visitors can check out notable pieces of art, such as Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais, The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent.

Explore Tate Britain’s collaboration with Google Arts & Culture here .

Frida Kahlo Museum (Mexico City)

The Frida Kahlo Museum is dedicated to the life and work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Interestingly, the museum is located within the building where Kahlo spent her childhood, lived with her husband Diego Rivera, and even where she died. Within the home’s ten rooms, you can appreciate minor works by Kahlo, as well as by Diego Rivera. Additionally, you’ll find personal mementos, pre-Hispanic artifacts, and Frida and Diego’s collection of Mexican folk art.

Click here to visit Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul and begin your tour.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

The Met is the largest museum in the United States, housing over two million works in its permanent collection. Although its virtual offerings are slightly more limited, you can explore some sections of the museum with the Met 360° Project . This series of six short videos allows you to visit the Great Hall, the Cloisters, the Temple of Dendur, the Breuer, the Charles Engelhard Court, and the Arms and Armor Galleries.

Learn more about the Met 360° Project here .

J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles)

This museum in L.A. actually began on-site at J. Paul Getty’s Malibu villa, and it has expanded today into two campuses: the Getty Center and the original Getty Villa. The paintings collection holds over 400 European paintings from notable artists, such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Jacques‑Louis David, Monet, and Degas. Some of the highlights to see are Orazio Gentileschi’s  Danaë , Turner’s  Modern Rome , Manet’s  Jeanne (Spring) , and Van Gogh’s  Irises . The Getty’s virtual tour in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture allows you to explore these paintings while explaining their cultural importance. Furthermore, the museum offers other ways to experience the Getty exhibitions from home here .

Start your virtual tour of the Getty Museum here .

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City)

Photo by Reno Laithienne on Unsplash

The Guggenheim Museum features mainly art from the modern and contemporary periods and began as an assemblage of several private collections. For example, Solomon R. Guggenheim gifted 600 artworks to the museum between 1937 and 1949. On a virtual tour , you can take a self-guided walk through the Guggenheim’s corridors. Additionally, you can listen to the museum’s audio guide , created in collaboration with the podcast 99% Invisible.

Check out the Guggenheim’s online virtual tour in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture here .

National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City)

The National Museum of Anthropology is the largest and most visited museum in Mexico. Its collection contains archaeological and anthropological artifacts from Mexico’s pre-Columbian era, which are of significant importance in maintaining the country’s cultural and indigenous heritage. During a virtual tour , you can view items such as the  Stone of the Sun and Pakal’s jade death mask .

Begin your virtual tour of the National Museum of Anthropology here .

Pergamon Museum (Berlin)

The Pergamon Museum is located in Berlin’s historic center on Museum Island. Albeit located in Germany, its exhibitions focus on the Middle East and Greek and Roman antiquity. For instance, the most important piece here is likely the famous Pergamon Altar , built in the first half of the 2nd century BC. Luckily, the museum’s virtual tour allows you to see its many items up-close, even though the building itself is closed for the time being.

Click here to begin a virtual tour of the Pergamon Museum.

MASP (São Paulo)

The São Paulo Museum of Art is the first museum on this list to be located in South America. It was founded in 1947 as Brazil’s “first modern museum”. The MASP possesses a considerable collection of European art–the finest in Latin America–as well as Brazilian art, prints, and drawings, and a small collection of Asian art. You can experience some of the museum’s exhibitions via Google Arts & Culture on a virtual tour . For example, learn more about art from Italy, Brazil, and France with the MASP’s online exhibits .

Take your own virtual tour of the São Paulo Museum of Art here .

Musée d’Orsay (Paris)

Photo by Peter Mitchell on Unsplash

The Musée d’Orsay is housed in a former railway station, which now holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914. In fact, this collection is the largest in the world of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces. Among the paintings collection, this museum features celebrated artists, such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, and Van Gogh. On the virtual tour , you can have a 360° view of the museum’s rooms as well as a closer look at many famous pieces of art.

Discover the Musée d’Orsay virtual tour here .

Picasso Museum (Barcelona)

Although there are now various museums dedicated to Pablo Picasso, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona was actually the first. It holds 4,251 works by the painter and even includes two of his first major works: The First Communion  (1896), and  Science and Charity (1897). On the Picasso Museum’s virtual tours , you can take a stroll around the rooms to see Pablo’s finest works, visit the beautiful courtyards, and even learn about the artist’s personal relationship with Barcelona.

Check out the Picasso Museum’s virtual tour options here .

Dalí Theatre-Museum (Figueres)

The Dalí Theatre-Museum is dedicated to the Spanish surrealist artist, Salvador Dalí. Located in his hometown of Figueres, it displays the largest collection of works by the artist as well as his personal collection. Some of the most important Dalí paintings you’ll find here include Basket of Bread (1945), Galatea of the Spheres (1952), and The Swallow’s Tail (1983). On the museum’s virtual tour , visitors explore the rooms and learn details on the artwork by clicking on the circles!

Begin your free virtual tour of the Dalí Theatre-Museum here .

The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)

The Art Institute of Chicago is the second-largest art museum in the United States, with nearly 300,000 works of art in its permanent collection. No matter where you are, the museum offers a variety of ways to explore its exhibitions from home. For example, on the Art Institute Essentials tour , you can learn more about the museum’s most famous pieces of art from the experts. You’ll dive into the historical context of Picasso’s The Old Guitarist, Van Gogh’s The Bedroom , and Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day . Additionally, you can get up and close with 30 iconic items on the Interactive Features platform. 

For more information on the Art Institute’s virtual visit options, click here .

Natural History Museum (London)

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

The Natural History Museum is located on Exhibition Road in London and contains approximately 80 million items. It is particularly recognized for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and as the home to specimens collected by Charles Darwin. Fortunately, there are multiple ways you can interact with the museum from home. For instance, explore the life of a blue whale , take an audio-guided tour of Hintze Hall, or go on a full virtual tour of the museum via Google Arts & Culture.

Read the Natural History Museum’s 13 ways to explore from home here .

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9 Virtual Reality Tours You'll Love

By Google Arts & Culture

Google Cardboard The Index Project

With a virtual reality viewer like Google Cardboard, you can use the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android to take a virtual tour of the street art scene in Rome; step inside a creation by famous street artist, Insa; or even travel 2,500 years back in time and look around the ancient Greek temple of Zeus. Make sure you've downloaded the app to experience these 10 breathtaking virtual reality tours in full. When on a museum or institution's page, scroll down to the 'Virtual Tours' section and click on a tour to launch the Cardboard experience...

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room - Detail by James McNeill Whistler Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

1. A 3D Stroll Through the History of the Peacock Room Take this immersive tour and learn about the dynamic history of the Peacock Room, the renowned decorative interior by American artist James McNeill Whistler. Follow the room’s transatlantic journey from England to America and explore its evolution as it moved from private homes in London and Detroit to its ultimate destination at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art on the National Mall. Using your Google Cardboard? Then click here , scroll down to 'Virtual Tours' - marked with the Google Cardboard icon - and click to launch the experience.

About the Blue House St. James' Settlement

2. A Walking Tour of the Blue House Take an immersive trip through the Blue House, Hong Kong, and explore this living time capsule showing you the grassroots community of the old city. Click here and scroll down for the virtual tour.

Street Artists in Dulwich Picture Gallery (2013) by photo by Richard Howard Griffin Dulwich Outdoor Gallery

3. Highlights of the Dulwich Picture Gallery With this tour , experience the highlights of England’s first purpose-built public art gallery in virtual reality, wherever you are!

Gold-inlaid Iron Sword (Inariyama Iron Sword) (5th Century) by Unknown Museum of the Sakitama Ancient Burial Mounds

4. The Story of the Inariyama Sword The Inariyama Sword (known in Japanese as kinsakumei tekken; roughly, "gold-inscription iron-sword") was excavated from the burial chamber of the Inariyama Kofun, the oldest giant burial mound in the Saitama Kofun Cluster. Discover the story of this Japanese national treasure here and immerse yourself in its fascinating history.

Installation of Gush (2014/2015) by Marilyn Minter The Water Tank Project

5. The Water Tank Project: A Virtual Walking Tour Art Above NYC. Water Above All. Explore the streets of New York City on this journey through the Water Tank Project, a street art exhibition that is wrapped around water tanks across the city.

Temple of Juno (-400) Valley of the Temples

6. Virtual Tour: Temple of Juno, Temple of Zeus and Early Christian Necropolis Click here to embark on a magical journey through the ancient temples of Sicily's Valle Dei Templi.

Aerial view of Robben Island, South Africa by Robben Island Museum Robben Island Museum

7. A Virtual Tour of Robben Island Prison Robben Island, South Africa is home to the infamous prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years, along with over 3,000 political prisoners during their fight to end Apartheid. Walk in the footsteps of this historic figure with this moving tour.

We Have Crossed the Lake (2009) by Ian Woo Singapore Art Museum

8. After Utopia Go on a search for your utopia through the contemporary Asian art of the Singapore Art Museum. Click here to scroll down and find the immersive experience.

The primitive model of the Statue of Liberty (1877/1880) by Pierre Petit Musée des arts et métiers

9. The construction of the Statue of Liberty Liberty Enlightening the World , aka the Statue of Liberty, has been enlightening New York Bay for over a century. From Paris to its home in New York, follow this artistic masterpiece and engineering achievement on its journey across the world.

Robben Island Prison Tour

Robben island museum, dulwich outdoor gallery tour, dulwich outdoor gallery, astonishing inventions in photography, musée des arts et métiers, people and places, singapore art museum, a brief history of the peacock room, smithsonian's national museum of asian art, the water tank project: a virtual walking tour, the water tank project, waste into wealth: designs to cap consumerism, the index project, color hong kong, by mr. au yeung nai chim's paint, st. james' settlement, valley of the temples - agrigento, valley of the temples, cultural exchange with the ancient korean peninsula, museum of the sakitama ancient burial mounds.

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Users can browse the permanent galleries of the British Museum the same way they might look for the precise location of a restaurant on Google Street View. 

A New Site Lets You Walk the British Museum From Your Couch

The world’s oldest national public museum is now the world’s largest indoor Google Street View.

In 1774, the British Museum —founded just 21 years earlier as the world’s first national public museum—had a problem, according to its then-director Matthew Maty. Too many of its 10,000 annual visitors were "persons of mean and low degree." Not only did Maty disapprove of "the lower kind of people" at the British Museum, but he complained that they also tended to be rude to the tour guides.

Imagine how horrified Maty would be if he knew that millions of visitors in 2015 can now stroll the storied galleries of his museum clad only in their skivvies, with a sloppy slice of pizza in one hand and a smartphone in the other.

That’s because the British Museum recently unveiled the results of its partnership with the Google Cultural Institute (GCI): the world’s largest Google Street View of an interior space, covering nine floors and 85 permanent galleries of the museum.  

The virtual walk-through enables anyone in the world with an Internet connection to explore the roughly 80,000 artifacts on display (which is just 1% of the total collection of at least eight million objects) just as they’re presented in the museum, from the Lewis Chessmen and cat mummies to famously contested artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles . Visitors start in the yawning expanse of the museum’s Great Court , the largest public square in Europe, with early morning light filtering through the 3,312 glass roof panes. All of the images stitched together into the Street View were captured before and after museum visiting hours, and the galleries of the United Kingdom’s top tourist attraction appear surreally empty.

Fewer than 200 objects that are currently on display at the museum are not included in the Street View; these are primarily works of modern art under copyright elsewhere and ethnographic objects that could not be photographed for cultural reasons, according to Chris Michaels, head of digital media and publishing at the museum.

In addition to the Street View, the British Museum collection at the GCI features virtual exhibits , an experimental " microsite " that maps all of the collections along a single timeline, and high-resolution, zoomable images of more than 4,500 selected objects with descriptions.

The most impressive image is a super-high-resolution ("Gigapixel") image of the Admonitions Scroll , a fifth-to-seventh-century A.D. copy of an earlier work crafted by Gu Kaizhi , considered the father of classical Chinese figure painting. The silk scroll is more than 11 feet (3.4 meters) long and so fragile that it is only displayed to the public for a few weeks every year. Now digitized, it can be examined — as if with a magnifying glass — anytime and anywhere in the world.

A Seven-Acre Tour of 80,000 Objects

Since its inception in 2007, Google Street View has enabled virtual voyeurism of everything from the Grand Canyon to a Scottish car wreck . Google also integrates this technology into their Cultural Institute , (where it is alternatively called "Museum View") capturing spaces as varied as Carnegie Hall and Pompeii . But creating a Street View in a museum requires a particular twist.

"We had to turn off our face-blurring technology," explains Piotr Adamczyk, who headed up the collaboration as program manager for GCI’s content team. Apparently, the Street View algorithm that automatically blurs identities of passersby in public also inadvertently wipes out the visages of sculptures, paintings and masks.

The technology that allowed the mapping of the museum is similar to that used to create Street View. 

Other than that, the process was fairly straightforward, with the seven-foot (2.1-meter)-high, two-foot (0.6-meter)-wide camera trolley walked through the galleries over the course of about five days. The GCI has performed complete or partial Street Views of more than 320 other museums and galleries — including India’s Heritage Transport Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — but nothing close to the scale of some 80,000 objects across seven acres (2.8 hectares) of floor space recorded in the British Museum. "The time it took to do the Street View capture is pretty much the amount of time it would take to walk through all of the galleries," notes Adamczyk.

Crowdsourcing and Minecrafting a 262-year-old Museum

The British Museum’s partnership with the GCI isn’t its only initiative in cyberspace. Its public database of more than 3.5 million objects has been continuously updated since 2007. Right now, virtual visitors can download objects from the collection to print on a 3D printer and even assist curators by crowdsourcing information on the museum’s Bronze Age sword collection.

According to Michaels, these cyber initiatives align nicely with the original mission of the 262-year-old museum. "The British Museum was founded on the principle to tell the story of the whole world to the people of the world," says Michaels. "We’re a museum built on sharing."

It’s even a museum that’s currently being built —literally—in the virtual world of Minecraft , one of the world’s best-selling video games.

And much like Matthew Maty took issue with some elements of the British Museum’s public mission in 1774, sharing the museum with the world in 2015 has a few of its own obstacles. "Recreating the ceiling of the Great Court was tricky enough in Street View," explains Michaels. "But it’s really tricky in Minecraft."

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The Dizzying Experience of Visiting Virtual Museums

By Sophie Haigney

Sophie Haigney

I’ve been taking some virtual walks lately through vacant closed museums. By which I mean to say I’ve been scrolling through Google Arts & Culture tours, clicking in and out of museums in Milan and Los Angeles and Seoul, using the arrow keys to spin around and around galleries I’ll probably never visit in person.

As museums the world over shut their doors in response to an uncontrolled global pandemic, many are staying open virtually, posting Instagram stories, livestreams, YouTube lectures, and Twitter threads. Some are spotlighting Google Arts & Culture tours that were uploaded before the fact. Since 2011, Google has partnered with hundreds of cultural institutions around the world to digitize portions of their physical space and make them virtually trawlable. The tours use the same technology as Google Street View , which aims to map and photograph every street on earth. As of December 2019, the company claimed it had captured 10 million miles of imagery, from the house down to the block to sections of the Great Barrier Reef. The world of Google Arts & Culture falls under the umbrella of the Google Cultural Institute , which falls under the umbrella of Google, which falls under the umbrella of Alphabet, which is a very large umbrella indeed. Like Google Street View, the world of Google Arts & Culture exists somewhere between 2D and 3D: 360-degree panoramas stitched together into on-screen simulations of physical spaces.

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In Google Arts & Culture’s “featured” category, I clicked on “Italy: All Roads Lead to Culture,” headlined by a zoomed-in video montage of gondoliers, marble fountains, the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, and a small church on a wheat-colored hill bracketed by cypress trees. I couldn’t help it: despite the easy sentiment, my heart swelled a little at the last image, which could be anywhere in Italy, but could also be a place where the death knells ring only once a day, so that they don’t ring constantly. Google invited me to explore various destinations. “Milan is for art lovers,” says one link, and as an art lover, I decided to click on Milan.

I went into the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. I’ll admit I’d never heard of the museum, but Google told me it has an impressive collection of Italian and European works from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, housed in a villa that once belonged to an Austrian count. I went through a courtyard, clicking my way impatiently past a lovely outdoor café, lush with flowers; in this world, it’s perpetual summer. I wondered how they got the museum empty enough in the middle of the day to capture it like this. In the first gallery I entered, there were some very white sculptures: busts, two lovers intertwined, a distinguished-looking man holding a quill pen. I could see wall text, but I couldn’t get close enough to read it. I navigated the room with my arrow keys, and suddenly I was very close to the heads of the kissing lovers. Then they were reversed, and I was accidentally in the next room, also filled with white sculpture, where I could read the wall text: “Cento Anni, Sculpture in Milan 1815–1915.” I learned, via Google search, that I was looking at an exhibition that had closed in December 2017, weirdly frozen in time on-screen.

There was almost no information. Sometimes the captions made me laugh a little: “This [collection] includes famous paintings and sculptures, living together within the walls of the museum.” Some of these tours are more informative, but I still found myself trying to Google objects based on their appearance, trying to find out what they were. Really, these aren’t tours at all, they’re better characterized as intensely random encounters. Suddenly, I zoomed in to a white spot on the wall, so close it was blurry. Suddenly, I was in a new room, filled with paintings, and looking sideways at a canvas that might or might not have been painted by Andrea Appiani. Suddenly, I was at an unmanned information desk. I was a little clumsy with the technology, certainly, but it’s also clumsy technology—not designed for looking closely so much as panoramically. Street View technology aims for a sort of overall sense of awe—the effect of a re-created space, rather than its details. A museum, I think, is oriented toward the details. My primary sensation on these tours is of the uncanniness of a world oddly stitched together. My secondary sensation is just dizziness. Still, if you accept that a Google Arts & Culture tour is nothing like walking through a museum, it has its own strange pleasures.

I like the halting visual whoosh the screen makes as you zoom from one room to another. I like being stuck between frames: half a parking lot and half a gallery, one sliding up to reveal the other. I like spotting blur-faced people and cars outside the museums, more freeze-frame ephemera. If you press a single arrow key long enough, you can set a gallery to spinning like a top. Keep in mind that this might cause a rainbow pinwheel to appear on your computer screen and all your applications to quit, sending you back to square one—a reset of the whole adventure. Then you can go back to the museum and click, click, scroll your tentative and glitchy way through, maybe taking a different path this time. In another Italian museum, the Uffizi in Florence, I kept having a problem centering myself, so I would slam into windows like a confused bird. There are technical hiccups, too: upstairs in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, a fire extinguisher appears in one frame, but as you get closer it fades into a red blur, an intentional but imperfect removal.

In another gallery, it seems Google accidentally blurred the faces in one of the paintings—a tactic the company uses in Street View as a sort of ad hoc privacy protection for people it has photographed. Sometimes Google Arts & Culture blurs paintings for copyright reasons, but this doesn’t seem to be the case here; the painting’s three faces are visible from most angles, but when you get close, they disappear. This strikes me as a perfect sort of malfunction, evidence of Google’s clumsy handiwork in piecing together a virtual museum world, a serendipitous error that could, depending on your mood, look like a very interesting piece of art.

SOME SHUTTERED MUSEUMS are operating different kinds of virtual tours on their own terms: lower on the tech, heavier on the information, easier to digest. Just before the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., shut down, curators and conservators began to record different spaces in the museum as quickly as they could—photos of artworks they like, and short videos of individual gallery spaces. Every day, the museum has been posting a single gallery at a time on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, with commentary by curators.

Anabeth Guthrie, the NGA chief of communications, said their website saw a 400 percent increase in traffic in the first week the museum was closed. More than half the hits came from Spain and Italy. “We are of course thinking about the visitors who may not be able to tour our exhibitions in person, as well as the teachers who are leading classrooms virtually, parents looking for child-friendly activities, and audiences who are dealing with anxieties,” Guthrie said in an email. “This is a chance for us to connect meaningfully without audiences and show that we are more than the sum total of the art in our galleries.” This seems to me the crux of the issue for museums: what they can offer when they can’t offer their physical space.

I’ve been scrolling through the National Gallery of Art’s mini-tour Twitter threads most days since they first posted them. It’s not the kind of thing I would usually do. I tend to think Twitter threads, especially ones meant to be informative, are cheesy. And maybe these are a little cheesy, replete with hashtags like #MuseumFromHome and #MuseumMomentofZen. The video quality could be better, certainly. But I find it soothing in its simplicity.

I watched and rewatched the slow pan of what was probably an iPhone camera around the upper level of the east building, gallery 407B, which contains mostly Abstract Expressionist works. Joan Mitchell’s Salut Tom (1979) takes up a whole wall, four panels of yellow and blue and green, inspired by the memory of her view of the river Seine. Later, watching a close-up video, I noticed how much black there was in the painting. I also noticed the empty bench in the middle of the gallery—unoccupied, serene.

Maybe I’m overwhelmed by the possibilities of artistic content online right now. It feels like there’s glut of options to look at. This is always true, but all the more so when I can see art only digitally. Here’s something that feels manageable. It involves no choice and no complicated technology, basically mimicking the experience of walking into a random gallery at a random museum where I might go with my parents if we were in D.C. together, which is not a very likely scenario, but weirdly comforting. I like the slow pan of the camera circling a single gallery and back again.

I’ve also been looking at art that was made to be seen on a screen. Specifically, I’ve been visiting Olia Lialina’s best.effort.network, a more advanced iteration of a 2015 piece that was supposed to be unveiled at arebyte Gallery in London this March. The closed gallery is livestreaming an installation view of the empty room. No matter, really—it was designed to be viewed on a screen.

The conceit is simple. On the web page, an image of an old-fashioned carousel rotates against a ghostly gray background. After a few seconds or minutes, an animation of Lialina appears to sit the carousel’s edge, pushing her feet against the digital ground to make it turn. She disappears again after a few rounds. The animation can appear in one person’s browser at a time; she will reappear eventually, after she has drifted through all the other browsers that are waiting online. It’s oddly remarkable, this limitation—we are so used to the online version of our bodies having the capacity to be everywhere at once.

“If I’m somewhere, I’m nowhere else,” Lialina said about the piece, over a video chat a few weeks ago. “It’s a bit against the logic that you can make an endless [number] of corpuses.” We were talking in the days just before the whole world moved on to Zoom—before we were all confined to a single physical space as our image multiplied across many browsers.

I’ve been logging on to the piece daily. It has taken longer, lately, for Lialina to appear; maybe more people are seeking comfort in net art. But she always comes, eventually, and leaves, and returns. It’s a strange thrill to know that I’m the only one seeing her then, that she is on my screen alone. It makes the experience of digital art feel somehow material, more solid than the images of sculptures in closed museums. It’s also nice to know that when Lialina’s image disappears, someone else is looking at it, on another computer, in another locked-down room.

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Take a virtual travel day with Street View

May 19, 2020

[[read-time]] min read

As a program manager for Street View, I’ve had the opportunity to work in more than 20 countries around the world, collecting imagery that transports people to new places and powers Google Maps. 

You can even find my blurred face from time to time in Street View. I’ve trekked a desert in Abu Dhabi (with a camel no less) and walked around the Great Pyramids of Giza (I’m the blurred face to the right). You can see my reflection throughout the 152nd floor of the Burj Khalifa , as I operate the Street View camera, and you can see me playing tourist in the canals of Venice . 

Like many people though, life and work look different for me now than it did last year. While travel is now out of the question for many, that doesn't mean exploring and learning about our world has to stop. 

Over the past 60 days we’ve seen Google Search interest spike more than 700 percent for virtual tours worldwide. People are looking to discover world famous museums, with the Louvre, the Smithsonian and the MoMA among the five most searched virtual tours globally. Alongside museums, people are also searching for a little bit of whimsy and beauty with searches for Disney virtual tours and Versailles virtual tours rounding out the list.

Those destinations only scratch the surface of what you can explore in Street View. There’s more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery you can freely explore by yourself or with professional guides who are taking their walking tours virtual. Today, I’m inviting people worldwide to take time for a virtual travel day on Street View. 

When I drop into a new place with Street View, it shakes up my routine, broadens my perspective, makes me feel more creative and brings a smile to my face. If you’re like me, sometimes you need an idea of where to go before you, well, go. So here are a few virtual travel itineraries with pictures of my favorite places to travel to in Street View:

Picture perfect landscapes

Quttinirpaaq National Park, Greenland

Doi Angkhang, Thailand

Milford Track, New Zealand

Northern Lights, Finland

Kegon Waterfalls, Japan

Le Mont Blanc, Switzerland

Moraine Lake, Canada

Streets with a view

Passo del Stelvio, Italy

Road 63, Norway

Seven Mile Bridge, United States

R759, Ireland

Ruta Provincial 74, Argentina

Places of worship

Bathalla Monastery, Portugal

Saint Stephen's Basilica, Hungary

Badshahi Mosque, Bangladesh

Sagrada Familia, Spain

Itsukushima Shrine, Japan

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Center, United Arab Emirates

Ancient sites

Angkor Wat - Ta Prohm Temple, Cambodia

Machu Picchu, Peru

Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

Tikal, Guatemala

Carthage, Tunisia

Petra, Jordan

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30 Best Free Virtual Museum Tours Around the World You Can Take Online

Have you ever thought of watching famous works of art, starships, or dinosaur bones while lying down on your bed or without leaving the living room? In fact, that isn’t strange now, as museums often host online exhibitions. Yes, with the strong development of science and technology, virtual museum tours are able to use modern technological gadgets to give people the opportunity to visit, see artifacts, etc. anytime, anywhere.

In particular, during the coronavirus blockade, taking virtual museum tours around the world is a great choice to keep traveling and exploring while sitting still at home to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it makes even more sense to promote this new way of tourism, especially when it’s free. Does it sound exciting to you yet? Let’s go!

Google Art & Culture

Google Arts & Culture, formerly known as Google Art Project, is a great online museum where everyone can easily access and view so many works of art for free. Indeed, these are all very high-resolution images with up to billions of pixels. Launched about a decade ago, the project initially received support from 17 of the world’s most prestigious museums. To elaborate, the Tate Modern in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York, the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, and the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Over time, Google has expanded its cooperation with about 150 museums as well as art galleries in 40 countries around the world, including the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Spain, which also known as Queen Sofia Arts Center.

The Digital Museum of Canada

Digital Museum Canada (DMC) is formerly known as the Virtual Museum of Canada. The virtual museum used to have a huge network of heritage organizations and a database of online exhibitions. Presently, it’s a program that calls for funds and invests in online projects that engage the audience of Canadian museums and heritage organizations.

The database of DMC has a long list of funded projects in different subjects that will surely open your mind to many aspects and new knowledge. In truth, the virtual museum’s broad directory includes Art, Cultures, Heritage, History, Indigenous, Industry, Media, Military, Nature, Science, and Sport. Does it sound interesting for you to explore?

Louvre Museum – Paris

Social-distancing or lockdown resulted from coronavirus brings a great chance for museums to apply technologies to their exhibition, including Louvre Museum. Precisely, Louvre virtual museum tours will take you to its online exhibitions with The Advent of the Artist, Power Plays, The Body in Movement, Founding Myths: From Hercules to Darth Vader, Egyptian Antiquities, Remains of the Louvre’s Moat, and Galerie d’Apollon.

Van Gogh Museum – Amsterdam

If you love to discover the work and life of Vincent Van Gogh, don’t forget to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Today, thanks to the museum’s online features, you are able to learn about the stories behind 2000 paintings here about life, scenes, and people as well as the talented painter’s life right from your home.

On top of that, Van Gogh’s most famous paintings are “Sunflowers” (1890), “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” (1890), “At Eternity’s Gate” or “Sorrowing Old Man” (1890), “The Starry Night” (1889), “Olive Trees” (1889), “The Night Café” (1888), and a series of his self-portrait, etc. are all on the homepage for you to comfortably admire.

Orangerie Museum – Paris

At the museum, you can explore a rich collection telling you the flow of art revolutionary from impressionism in the 19th century to 20th century art inspired by the era before. Besides that, Orangerie invites you to virtual view giant murals of Nymphéas, or Water Lilies, of the French Impressionist Claude Monet under 360° views.

The Broad – Los Angeles

I haven’t thought of a museum in this world that has a similar name to my travel blog – The Broad Museum and The Broad Life. That coincidence has fostered my decision to put The Broad on this list of virtual museum tours.

I’m just kidding. In fact, The Broad is a hub for contemporary art. Recently, the museum closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Notwithstanding, its From Home digital initiatives are still online to inspire visitors through performances, talks & conversations, artist spotlight, family art workshops, and other programs.

The British Museum – London

The iconic museum in central London takes you to the explorations of the world since 2,000,000 BC. Really, the virtual tour’s areas cover many topics including Art and Design, Living and Dying, Power and Identity, Religion and Belief, Trade and Conflict throughout human history to the modern days. I won’t be surprised if your history teacher is astonished by your knowledge from passing all the events in the online tour of the British Museum.

Guggenheim Museum – New York

The collaboration with Google Street View feature allows visitors to tour the famous Guggenheim spiral staircase. Not to mention, you can explore amazing artworks from the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary eras. Moreover, Guggenheim exhibits works of art by world-famous artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, etc. Surely, Guggenheim Museum is the top destination in New York for any painting enthusiasts.

National Museum of Anthropology – Mexico City

It’s going to take you days to fully explore the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Indeed, the museum houses archaeological and anthropological artifacts dating from pre-Columbian times in Mexico. Its collection includes Sunstones and a room dedicated to Mayan culture. However, with the virtual museum tours, you can admire the ruins of art and ancient cultures of Mexico with ease. Truly, they have quite a lot of online exhibitions for you to experience.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History – Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of Natural History is managed by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall complex in Washington, D.C., USA. Admission is free and open 364 days a year. Hence, it is the third most visited museum in the world and also the most visited museum in North America. The museum’s collection contains about 127.3 million specimens, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts. More specifically, the collections include 30 million insects, 4.5 million crops preserved in the museum’s gallery, and 7 million fish conserved in liquid containers.

In addition, virtual museum tours Smithsonian has many exhibits from the past to the present for users to self-explore. There are also narrated tours or tours to the stations and areas of the museum.

Uffizi Gallery – Florence

There aren’t many people who know the story of Uffizi. Initially, it was the place to keep the art collections of one of the most famous families in Florence , Italy. The building was designed by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for the Grand Duke of Toscana – Cosimo I de ‘Medici.

Today, the Uffizi Gallery is one of the most valuable galleries in the world with its Renaissance cultural artifacts. With the benefits of the museum’s new virtual tour, you can easily visit and admire the magnificence of the artworks in this gallery. Evenly, they do have an online map applying 360° virtual tour for you to go around the museum as being there.

MASP – São Paulo

MASP is the abbreviation of the museum’s name in Portuguese – Museu de Arte de São Paulo. Truly, MASP not only isn’t just Brazil’s first museum but also one of the non-profit cultural centers.

MASP museum owns the largest and most complete collection of Western art from Latin America to the entire Southern Hemisphere. Currently, the museum has more than 8,000 works including paintings, sculptures, artifacts, and costumes from various periods in different cultures and arts such as Africa, Asia, Europe, and America from the 13th century to the present. On top of that, its unique showcase is the artworks placed on transparent acrylic glass frames. Thanks to that, the pictures have the effect of being floating in midair. Of course, you can view all of those through its online exhibition.

Benaki Museum – Athens

The museum houses Greek artworks from prehistoric times to modern times and a large Asian art collection. Alongside, it hosts periodic exhibitions and maintains a workshop on modern art restoration and preservation. In cyberspace, Benaki will take you on virtual museum tours through its 4 floors with a lot of exhibits. Indeed, you can freely access the online tours directly on its website, sounds cool?

Rijksmuseum – Amsterdam

The Rijksmuseum in the capital Amsterdam is the place to display the history of Dutch art from the Middle Ages. For instance, many famous artworks of the gifted artist are also preserved here such as “Self Portrait” (Vincent Van Gogh), “Night Watch” (Rembrandt), “The Threatened Swan” (Jan Asselijn), “The Love Letter ”(Johannes Vermeer), etc.

Thanks to the latest technology from Google Street View, Rijksmuseum is able to give us its real exhibition on the virtual world.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art – Korea

One of Korea’s famous museums that you can freely access from anywhere in the world. Factually, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art attracts a large number of visitors, especially young people every year. At this moment, by a collaboration with Google Art & Culture, MMCA takes you through its online exhibitions in the 4 branches . Furthermore, the museum itself contains hundreds of unique programs and artworks of Korean and international artists and sculptors.

Pergamonmuseum – Berlin

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Berlin, Pergamonmuseum is located on Museum Island, which is famous for its possession of archaeological artifacts. Actually, the Pergamonmuseum is a combination of three small museums: Vorderasiatisches Museum, the Museum für Islamische Kunst, and the Antikensammlung. Therefore, this museum has a lot to explore. Especially, it is home to many massive archaeological structures including the Mshatta Facade, the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way from Babylon, and the Market Gate of Miletus.

Like many museums on the planet, Pergamonmuseum collabs with Google Art & Culture to showcase its enormous collections and 360 views.

Musée d’Orsay – Paris

You will feel like you are walking through this famous gallery via its virtual tour. Orsay Museum holds dozens of immortal artworks of French artists from 1848 to 1914. Hence, make sure you don’t miss any famous works of art here that come from Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, etc.

National Gallery of Art – Washington, D.C.

This American art museum showcases two online exhibitions on Google Art & Culture. The first is a brief survey of American fashions from 1740 to 1895, which includes many costume performances from the colonial era to the time of the Industrial Revolution. Secondly, the gallery of artworks by Dutch Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer.

Museum of Broken Relationships – Zagreb and Los Angeles

I was significantly surprised right when accessing the website of the Museum of Broken Relationships, or Brokenships. Undeniably, it’s the first kind of museum I have ever seen in my life. Generally, you can think of this museum as a place that holds and shares stories and items of heartbroken people around the world.

At the moment, they have two museums in Zagreb and Los Angeles and tens of exhibitions across the globe. On the online site, you can see the heartbreaks that people pin to express their just-ended relationships. Exclusively, you can have a watch at Brokenships’ collection of items when the people are in love. Ok, curious yet?

National Gallery of Victoria – Melbourne

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has an extensive permanent collection of more than 66,000 artworks from Europe, Asia, America, and Oceania. Particularly, those works include sculptures, drawings, pictures, and antiques created by international and domestic artists like Bernini, Cézanne, Corregio, Manet, Monet, and Picasso, etc. Also, NGV organizes many major traveling exhibitions from Europe, America, and Asia.

Nowadays, you can visit the gallery right from your bed. NGV applying Matterport 3D Showcase to open virtual museum tours enjoying its exhibitions. Just make sure you walk through the gallery’s guidelines for using the system to take your online tour smoothly.

Vietnam National Museum of History – Hanoi

Vietnam is a country with a rich heritage and history. It’s also my home country. Therefore, it will be a deficiency in this list of virtual museum tours if I miss introducing the Vietnam National Museum of History. The museum stores, displays, and introduces the country’s history from prehistoric times to the present day in the most comprehensive and continuous manner. Therefore, this museum is ideal for oriental history lovers.

Being one of the first museums in Vietnam that take the trend of going digital, the Vietnam National Museum of History applies a 3D system to improve its visitor’s interaction. At present, you can take the 3D tours to view its online exhibitions including the Dong Son Culture, the Oc Eo Culture, the Prehistory of Vietnam, and the Dynasties of Ngo, Dinh, Tien, Le, Ly, Tran. There are also special exhibits of Vietnamese Antique Mascots, Buddhist Cultural Heritage, and Antique Lamps of Vietnam.

Hong Kong Heritage Museum

The museum is a storage that showcases the cultures and arts of Hong Kong as well as the nearby South China region. On its website, you can easily find the museum’s collections categorized into Local History, Performing Art, Folk Art, Popular Culture, Contemporary Art, Design, Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, and Chinese Antiquities. Alongside temporary exhibitions, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum permanently exhibits the Jin Yong Gallery, the Children’s Discovery Gallery, the Cantonese Opera Heritage Hall, the T.T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art, and the Chao Shao-an Gallery.

Excluding the collaboration with Google Art & Culture to showcase its collection, you can take a visit to the museum’s online programs with 3 virtual exhibitions.

Tate Modern – London

The Tate Modern has an extensive collection of contemporary and modern art which covers most of the trends from the early twentieth century. Especially, the museum is perhaps the most important place to keep contemporary British and international artworks from the 1980s to recent years.

At Tate Modern, you can learn more about its collections online right from the website. Or, you can explore the museum’s corners with 360° views on the platform of Google Art & Culture.

Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago is a major art museum in the world. It is also known for collections from the masters of impressionism and post-impressionism as well as leading artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Renault, and Calleport with more than 350 masterpieces. Also, the museum has one of the top three surrealist art collections in America.

Presently, the Art Insitute of Chicago is filling the gap between reality and virtual exhibitions by hosting its online events. Those series are including Virtual Talk, Virtual Lecturer, Virtual Intersections, etc. You must register to join those programs. But don’t worry, it’s free to join.

Museum of Modern Art – New York

In the brick-and-mortar version, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) boasts excellent architecture and a rather majestic collection of modern art. Besides, there are also many restaurants, cafes, and shops for visitors to relax and do shopping.

In the online version, MoMA brings virtual views of its modern artworks to visitors by applying a 3D model. For example: when clicking on Van Gogh’s Starry Night, you are able to learn about the story, watch a conversation, and explore the painting under a virtual 3D model. So, do you want to explore yet?

National Palace Museum – Taipei City

I will never forget my first trip traveling to Taipei, Taiwan as well as the National Palace Museum, which was also the first-ever tourist destination I visited in the country. At the moment, this museum is house to one of the world’s largest collections of Chinese art with about 700,000 artifacts spanning from the Qing, Ming, Yuan, and Song empires.

Today, those collections once again appear under the virtual museum tours for you to view right from our homes. To elaborate, they have up to 16 online exhibitions and 3 views on the platform of Google.

National Women’s History Museum

As the name, the museum was created to inspire and educate about women’s contribution to the society and history of the world. Right now, NWHM is totally a “museum without walls” with all the resources online. You can learn more about the pioneering women on its online exhibitions or read the stories, and articles on the website.

Studio Ghibli Museum – Mitaka

Do you know about Totoro, Princess Mononoke, or Kaonashi in Spirited Away? Yes, they are all the characters from Ghibli Studio, with Ghibli Museum to showcase their works.

Ghibli Museum is well-known for its strict rules of not allowing guests to take photos or videos when visiting the museum. You can’t even open your phone when getting inside the area. Nonetheless, you can now take a trip around the museum through YouTube videos while staying at home. Perhaps going digital is currently a trend among museums around the world, including the Studio Ghibli Museum.

The J. Paul Getty Museum – Los Angeles

J. Paul Getty Museum keeps European art from the Middle Ages to the Modern period. Particularly, the museum has thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, manuscripts, and photos that give you a multi-dimensional view of European art, culture, and history from the 8th century to the present. Additionally, the J. Paul Getty Museum even gives you 360° views to explore all the corners of the museum.

Vatican Museums – Rome

As one of the most famous and admirable museums in the world, the Vatican Museums are also a valuable asset of the capital of Rome and the Vatican. Here, it showcases many valuable works of art from the large collections created by the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries.

Alongside, the museum has one of the best virtual museum tours that not only host by itself but take visitors through many sections. Yes, you can explore 15 virtual tours of the museums and the archaeological areas with 360° views. There are also departments, restoration & scientific services, and masterpieces for you to learn. Is it great?

PIN THIS POST NOW TO SAVE YOUR LIST OF VIRTUAL MUSEUM TOURS AROUND THE WORLD!

Khoi Nguyen

Khoi Nguyen builds The Broad Life with a desire to inspire people go exploring the world and live a more interesting, experience, and adventurous life. This blog shares the stories, pictures, and experiences at destinations where he has traveled to.

38 Comments

These are so great. We love touring museums and other places like this virtually. We discovered these virtual tours during the pandemic’s heaviest part, and it was a great way to get out without actually going out.

Absolutely this is a great alternative way to travel while the covid is happening!

This is a great resource. As a mom of three kids, I can say with certainty that these are gerat. We’ve been taking advantage of virtual tours almost since the pandemic started.

I can see this is a great way for your kids to both learn about the new technology and travel in safety.

These are so wonderful. I love virtual tours like this. They’re a fantastic way to get out and see the world when you can’t actually get out.

Yeah, never stop exploring and learning with the virtual tours.

Tracy Isidore

I have never been one for museums, but this post makes me want to see some of them! I’ll have to add this to my bucket list, thanks for sharing!

You can try the virtual museum tours in this list before going to a real one. Perhaps with more knowledge learning virtually, a real trip will make you feel more exciting.

TheSuperMomLife

This is so awesome! I am going to take my kids on a virtual tour of all of them!

I’m so sure that your kids will like the virtual tours.

Sandra Ward

Wow! This is exciting. I’m going to check out a few of these. I’m sure my daughters would love to explore these virtually too!

The kids are certainly in love with the virtual museum tours. They can be a great resource for your daughter to both travel and learn many things at the same time. Have great times with your daughter!

This is such great information! Virtual and free museum visits, so nice. We live near the museum district Houston and I should try your reco with my kids

With the virtual museum tours, you can even take your kids to so many museums around the world only just the one in Houston. I’m so sure the kids will love it a lot.

Tiffany McCullough - Metaphysical Mama

This is wonderful! My son and I have really gotten into doing all the virtual tours since the pandemic started. Thank you for compiling this list!

You’re welcomed! I think you had great times with your son visiting the museums across the world.

Ntensibe Edgar

Nnnniiicccceeeeeee…can we tour museums this way, from this “season” onwards? I have loved it! And, I was so impressed with what I chose to tour first, “National Museum of Anthropology – Mexico City”.

Yeah, I think they will open this onwards. You can slowly enjoy all the tours.

I love that we are able to view museums this way. This is a great list you have put together.

I’m glad that you like the list and enjoy the virtual tours.

Warp Speed Odyssey

Wow, this is so cool. I can’t wait to try the louvre in my oculus rift.

That must be awesome when using oculus rift to take the online museum tours!

This is an awesome list! My kids will surely enjoy this!

Hopefully, you have great times spending with your kids at the virtual museum tours!

Blair Villanueva

I love visiting museums! I make sure that I visit at least one museum in every places I visited especially the small local museums. I guess we will visit The National Museum in Melbourne, and the rest will visit online. Awesome!

I hope you enjoy the virtual tours.

Angela Ricardo Bethea

I love doing virtual tours and those are all wonderful selection of vitual museum tours around the world. Thanks for the share and would definitely visit some of them sometime.

You will find they are interesting as you are taking real tours.

I have yet to do a virtual museum tour. Wow I should totally participate in one of these!

You will find they are great especially at this time when we are better staying at home to avoid covid-19.

Anosa Malanga

Traveling is not yet normalized until these days and glad to know that there are such virtual museum tour. Definitely a great way to still discover amazing places even if there is a global pandemic.

I totally agree with you. Also, there are other virtual tours besides the museum ones. Definitely, I will update them all soon on my blog.

emman damian

I want to do the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History – Washington, D.C. virtual tour! Seems like a fun one. Maybe The British Museum too? Great list!

Thanks for your comment!

Neely Stoller

I have actually done a few virtual tours during this time and its really fun!

Glad that you enjoy the virtual museum tours!

I must digitally visit this museum. I never been to Canada so fun way to explore from home.

Absolutely!

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18 Virtual Tours Worth Taking

Many museums, parks, and zoos have recently launched virtual tours and interactive experiences. Check out this list to learn more!

During the COVID pandemic, most of us had our travel wings clipped a bit. The inability to travel was tough but luckily, many travel-oriented companies decided to pivot a bit and offer virtual travel tours and activities. Many of these virtual tours proved to be such a hit that they’re still in place today! 

Virtual tours are a great way to explore a new place, even if you don’t have the luxury of traveling at the time. Some of the best virtual tours take you deep into a destination, sharing insider tips and hidden gems you may never learn about otherwise. This is a particularly great option when you want to “visit” some of the world’s greatest museums and parks without having to endure the crowds and the high costs of getting there!

Explore the world with Let’s Roam .

At Let’s Roam, we specialize in turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. We strongly believe you can have a great time no matter if you’re exploring the streets of Mexico City or hanging out with your friends and family at home. To help you along the way, we’ve created hundreds of exciting app-based scavenger hunts , in-home games , virtual birthday party events, and much more. You can access all of these great experiences through the Let’s Roam app or on our website. 

The Best Virtual Tours to Help You Explore the World

Below you’ll find a list of some of the best virtual tours. Our team of in-house travel experts has scoured the globe (and the internet!) to find the best virtual tours. Many of these virtual tours are free to view and have a ton of other fun goodies that you can listen to or read while you’re there. This is a fun way to pass the time when you’re unable to travel, and it’s much better than looking at these destinations on social media. 

We’ve broken them down by museums and galleries, world landmarks, and parks and zoos and have included information on family-friendly activities available to make it even easier to plan an awesome virtual trip around the world with the whole family!

Museums and Galleries

1. the louvre virtual tour.

The Louvre is one of the best art museums in the entire world. People line up outside for hours to get a glimpse of artworks such as Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation. It probably comes as no surprise that the Louvre is also one of the world’s most searched virtual tours. Not only do you get a private glimpse into Paris’ most legendary art museum, but you get to escape the massive groups. These virtual tours allow you to see not only the museum’s most famous works, but it also allows you to go into the museum archives to see what lies behind the scenes. 

The Louvre offers a wide variety of virtual tours based on interesting themes or areas of the museum. You can choose from Founding Myths: Hercules to Darth Vader, the Body in Movement, and Power Plays. There’s also a Louvre at Home section of their website where you can access different activities and events held at the museum including podcasts, kids activities, and virtual reality experiences.

2. Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh is considered to be one of the most influential artists of the 19th century. His Post-Impressionistic work is famous for its use of bright colors and vibrant brush strokes that convey deep expression and emotion. While visiting the Van Gogh Museum is a must for anyone traveling through Amsterdam, the Van Gosh Museum also lets you view his famous work from the comfort of your own home!

During your virtual visit, you can check out some of Van Gogh’s masterpieces as well as work by some of his contemporaries through the museum’s online collection. You can also read stories about Vincent’s life and work along with some of his letters and greatest quotes. There’s a special section of the website dedicated to activities for children including coloring books and board games. If that’s still not to satiate your desire to learn more about this famous Dutch artist, you can also download apps to your phone that offer free books or watch videos on YouTube. This is the perfect resource for anyone hoping to learn more about Vincent Van Gogh and his work in a fun and memorable way!

3. The Guggenheim Museum

As one of the most famous museums in New York City, the Guggenheim is at the top of many travel wish lists. From the robust curves of the exterior to the world-class collections inside, this is one museum you won’t want to miss! Some of the highlights of the collection include works by Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, and Edouard Manet, amongst many other 20th-century artistic legends. Lucky for us, you don’t have to travel to the Big Apple to get a sneak peek at all the museum has to offer!

The Guggenheim Museum offers an online collection of more than 1,700 artworks by more than 625 artists from the late 19th century through today. The database is searchable by artists, date, movement, and medium. It is designed to showcase the diversity and tenor of the Guggenheim’s New York collection as well as pieces from the Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The Guggenheim also offers an extensive list of online courses for adults, kid’s activities, and a slew of family-friendly activities. 

4. Google Arts Project: Street Art

Street art has become one of the most beloved art genres around the world. From gritty graffiti to colorful murals, street art tells the story of a destination in a way that few other mediums can. Google has attempted to bring these stories to life through its Google Arts Project. Focusing on street art from around the world, the project features virtual tours of destinations like Buenos Aires and Lima as well as themed tours centered on different types of art. 

Visitors to the Google Arts Project website can go on virtual walking tours, listen to audio tours, and view online exhibitions while learning about the artists through interactive features. It’s a fascinating way to view street art from all corners of the globe without having to pack your passport! If street art isn’t your thing, don’t worry. The Google Arts & Culture Project includes high-res images from more than 2,000 of the world’s leading museums including many of the museums on this list!

5. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Another of New York’s treasures, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also known as the Met, stands proudly on 5th Avenue, overlooking Central Park. This fantastic museum holds a bewildering collection of more than 490,000 pieces of art and artifacts from all corners of the planet including paintings by Vermeer and sculptures from ancient Egypt. The museum is organized by region of the world, and as you wander through the endless galleries, it feels like you’re traveling around the world without ever leaving Manhattan! 

This world-class museum can be visited anywhere in the world thanks to the Met 360° Project . This virtual experience is a series of six videos that have been created using 360° technology to help you explore every nook and cranny of this famed museum. The videos have been viewed more than 11 million times and offer a unique perspective of what goes on inside the museum. You may find yourself suddenly standing in an empty gallery, soaring high above the museum’s roof, or feeling like you are watching the world in fast-forward thanks to a time-lapse video. The experience is truly unique. Even if you’ve been to the Met before, you have never seen it quite like this!

6. Vatican Museums

As the heart of Catholicism and the home of countless treasures, the Vatican Museums in Rome are some of the most revered museums in the entire world. On their website, you can access a series of virtual tours that take you inside some of the most popular areas of the complex including the Sistine Chapel, the Pio Clementino Museum, and the Profane Museum.

You can start your visit with a 360-degree view of the Sistine Chapel, undoubtedly one of Michelangelo’s most famous masterpieces. The spectacular ceiling can be viewed in high-res detail, giving you a close-up look at the stories of Christ, Moses, and the various Popes over the past 2,000 years. The Vatican also offers real-time live webcams which lets you see what’s happening in Vatican City throughout the day. This is a great way to explore the history and art of the Roman Catholic Church. 

7. British Museum

Famous for being one of the best museums in the United Kingdom, the British Museum first opened its doors back in 1759. The collection has grown exponentially since those early days and the British Museum now holds a collection of more than eight million items showcasing more than two million years of human history. Some of the highlights of the museum include the Rosetta Stone and the Statue of Ramesses II in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery and items recovered from Ancient Roman cities.

There are many ways you can virtually explore the British Museum. The museum is the world’s largest indoor space on Google Street View so this is probably the best place to start your journey! This gives you the chance to view more than 60 different galleries and create your own curated tour of your favorites. Before you head into each gallery, don’t forget to listen to the insightful introduction from the museum’s audio tours. There are also many online galleries where you can find art from Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands as well as podcasts featuring curators, authors, artists, and scientists. There’s even a library of kid-friendly resources specially designed for ages 3 to 16.

If you’re still hungry for more British art and history, head over to the National Gallery . This art gallery is home to more than 2,600 paintings from around the world. Here, you can take a Director’s Tour of the galleries, view paintings celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, or discover Renaissance masterpieces. 

8. Getty Museum

Located in Los Angeles, the Getty Museum is one of the best museums on the West Coast. The Getty Museum’s virtual tours focus on both particular works of art and broader themes. Some of the virtual tours on offer include the Grand Canal in Venice by Canaletto, J. M. W Turner’s Modern Rome, Irises by Vincent Van Gogh, and Manet’s Spring. There is also an orientation film where you can learn more about the museum and its collection.

Although it’s not possible to access the Getty Museum’s virtual tours on their website, they can be found on Google Arts & Culture and on the Joy of Museums Virtual Tours .

9. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is one of the many amazing museums in Washington, D.C. This fascinating museum takes you through millions of years of evolution and human history through an incredible selection of artifacts.

Besides having a massive collection of 147 million artifacts, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History also boasts an impressive “Explore from Home” selection. As part of the Objects of Wonder virtual exhibit, the program shares the story behind many of its items. You can take a virtual narrated tour of the exhibition or visit their online featured collections. 

10. Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

As the Met’s “little sister,” the Museum of Modern Art specializes in art from the 20th century. For many visitors, the highlight of the museum’s collection includes Van Gogh’s eerie yet idyllic Starry Night. You can find this and many more of the museum’s artwork on their online exhibition. 

The museum also offers some interesting videos online of New York City itself. The videos offer a very interesting perspective of the Big Apple that is a far cry from the glitz and glamour you see on social media and TV. You can also listen to audio shows or watch movies as part of their Film Vault Summer Camp. 

11. The Uffizi Gallery

In a country that’s famous for its art and history, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence stands head and shoulders above its competition. This breathtaking museum is home to some of Italy’s most famous paintings and sculptures including Botticelli’s breathtaking Birth of Venus and Primavera, and Titan’s Venus of Urbino. 

The Uffizi’s virtual tours give you a three-dimensional view of this world-renowned museum. You can see all of their most famous paintings. The best part about it is you don’t have to jostle amongst the crowds of people that are there all year round! There are also videos posted on their website that give you a brief introduction to the museum’s collection as well as nearby attractions like the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens. 

World Landmarks

12. great wall of china.

Stretching a whopping 3,000 miles long, there’s been a long-running rumor for decades that the Great Wall of China is one of the world’s only landmarks that can be seen from space. While that is definitely not true, you can view the longest structure ever built by humans on the China Guide’s virtual tour of the Great Wall. This 2,000-year-old wall stretches through a number of provinces in northern China, and this virtual tour allows you to view this world wonder without having to go through the lengthy and frustrating China visa process. 

Through the virtual tour, you can view both the interior and exterior sections of the wall, enjoy the beautiful scenery of northern China, and get a close-up look at the brick walls and windows that still stand proudly after two millennia. While their website offers a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient site, you can also join a live tour with a guide who will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have! This is a great option for people who want to see more of the Great Wall of China but may not be able to conquer the never-ending steps to get there!

13. Heritage on the Edge

Google’s Heritage on the Edge lets you view UNESCO World Heritage sites using 3D maps. This interactive program provides interesting information about the history and heritage of a site as well as the lengths people are taking to protect these sites from the effects of climate change. Some of the different destinations you can explore include Easter Island, Edinburgh, the California Redwoods, Bangladesh, and Chan Chan, Peru. 

The aim of the project is to digitally preserve these UNESCO sites that are currently being degraded by droughts, erosion, flooding, and more. There are interviews from local communities along with experts discussing how climate change is impacting the sites. The website gives a fascinating look into these areas and is particularly interesting for anyone planning on visiting Easter Island or Edinburgh anytime in the near future. 

14. Eiffel Tower

It’s hard to look at any travel blog or article about Paris without seeing this famous tower. Erected in 1887 as part of the Paris World’s Fair, it quickly became a symbol of the City of Light. Today, people make the journey to the top of the tower to enjoy sweeping views of Paris down below.

Even if you can’t get all the way to Paris, there’s no reason why you can’t see the Eiffel Tower up close and personal! There are many different virtual tours available that will take you up into the tower and let you admire the spectacular views yourself! You simply need to log onto the Eiffel Tower website and look for their mobile tour guide. Here, you can find a plethora of information about the history of the Eiffel Tower as well as the surrounding area. It’s just like having your own personal tour guide but without the high costs and the crowds!

15. Disney World 

Getting to Disney World or Disney Land can be an epic experience for many people. These beloved theme parks make many childhood fantasies come true and have almost become like a rite of passage for many families. However, getting to one of the Disney theme parks can be a painfully expensive and simply painful affair. The long lines and the shocking price tags for pretty much everything can put this adventure out of many people’s reach.

However, this certainly doesn’t mean you and your family have to miss out on the magic of the Magic Kingdom. In fact, there are tons of different ways you can visit the parks virtually. From park walk-throughs filmed by tourists to virtual experiences created by Disney lovers, you simply need to do a quick Google search. One of the best places to start is on Google Street View where you can check out 360-degree panoramas. From there, you can head over to their YouTube channel to virtually experience even more Disney attractions!

Parks and Zoos

16. san diego zoo.

The San Diego Zoo is one of the most famous zoos in the entire United States. Located in Balboa Park just north of downtown San Diego, it’s home to more than 4,000 animals (many of which are endangered) and more than 700,000 individual plants. 

On their website, you can access live cameras including the koala cam, panda cam, hippo cam, and penguin cam. Some of the cameras are live while others are pre-recorded due to ongoing construction at the zoo. This is the perfect way to keep track of your favorite animals in realistic-looking habitats. You can also watch videos covering different topics such as pigmy hippos, tapir calves, and toucan chicks to learn more about these fascinating animals. 

17. Monterey Bay Aquarium

Monterey Bay Aquarium is located on the edge of Monterey Bay just south of San Francisco in Central California. The aquarium offers more than 200 exhibits and 80,000 plants and animals with a focus on local and regional species. Like the San Diego Zoo, the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers live webcams that give you the chance to see your favorite marine animals any time of the day! Some of the animals you can view include jellyfish, penguins, sea otters, sharks, and more! There are also webcams of Monterey Bay and the open bar so you can see what’s happening in the ocean. 

If you want to experience something really unique, head over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s YouTube channel where you can watch videos of marine animals paired with ambient and instrumental music. Now that is one mesmerizing way to relax!

18 . Houston Zoo

If the San Diego Zoo doesn’t have webcams of your favorite animals, don’t despair. The Houston Zoo has even more webcams just waiting for you! The zoo’s webcams allow you to see their herd of Asian elephants making their way through their habitat, watch giraffes nibble on their favorite snack of lettuce, or laugh as hippos roll around in a massive mud puddle. For anyone that prefers primates, you can even watch chimpanzees and gorillas interact with guests. The webcams also give you a view into the zoo’s educational programs and animal care

Ready to roam?

We hope this list of virtual tours has left you excited to explore the world! As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please let us know if there is anything we may have missed!

If you want to read about more destinations around the world, make sure to head over to the Let’s Roam Explorer blog . Here, you will find hundreds of destination guides, travel articles, and must-see lists for destinations around the world. These have all been written by our very own in-house travel experts who can give insider tips for destinations ranging from Alabama to Antarctica and everywhere in between! Also, don’t forget to download the Let’s Roam app before you head off on your next adventure. This handy app gives you access to all of our fantastic scavenger hunts as well as user-generated information for locations across the country. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Many of the world’s most famous museums offer free virtual tours . These are a great way to learn more about the collection itself as well as its history and culture.

Many museums offer interactive virtual tours where you can zoom in on particular works of art to read more about them or look at them in closer detail.

While most zoos don’t offer virtual tours per se, they do offer live webcams that allow you to see what your favorite animals, and their caretakers, are doing throughout the day!

There are many different historical sites and museums that offer virtual tours . If you want to see historical sites, you can check out Google’s Heritage on the Edge.

Virtual tours are the perfect way to get to explore the world around you if you don’t have the time, money, or desire to travel. They’re very educational and can be fun at the same time!

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Italia Living

Live Life Italian Style

Tour Lamborghini Museum with Google Street View

Auto & Yacht , Featured / October 2013 by Italia Living

Get up close to Lamborghini from the comfort of…well, anywhere

Italians are known for many things…and one of them is certainly for their automobiles. If you are a car lover and in northern Italy, it is worth spending some time at the Lamborghini Museum in Sant’Agata. The 16,000-square-foot facility houses what is the most magnificent collection of Raging Bulls in the world on two levels of glassed-in floorspace. But if your travel plans won’t be taking you to Bologna, Lamborghini has teamed up with Google to provide the next best thing.

To get a closer look at the Lamborghini Museum, head over to Google Maps in your browser or the Google Maps app on your smartphone or tablet, and see the whole museum in Street View.

Visit:  Museo Lamborghini on Google Maps

Official Press Release:

Automobili Lamborghini launches exclusive museum indoor view on Google Maps

Automobili Lamborghini has become the first Italian company in the luxury automotive industry to launch an indoor view of its exclusive museum. This innovative feature derived from Google’s street view technology allows visitors to navigate through the two-story structure located in Sant’Agata Bolognese and explore the exotic collection of classic and modern super sports cars.

Thanks to this advanced technology, web users from across the globe can now experience a 360° panoramic view of Lamborghini’s select assortment of iconic supercars which have been a symbol of Made in Italy since 1963. Spread across two floors covering 1.500 square meters, the museum’s collection includes a selection of world famed production series such as the Miura, Countach, Diablo and Murciélago accompanied by extraordinary prototypes, limited editions, one-off models, racing cars and marine engines. Unique scale models of original styling taken from Lamborghini’s Centro Stile can also be found on display along with some of the legendary V12 powertrains.

The virtual experience includes a distinct feature which allows visitors to access an interior view of a select few models and offers the rare opportunity to see the Reventòn -limited series of only 20 units- Estoque and Sesto Elemento which are exclusive to Lamborghini’s museum.

The virtual tour of Lamborghini’s museum is available on PC, tablet and mobile via Browser and the Google Map App. The App software is supported by both iOS and Android operating systems.

To experience a virtual tour of Lamborghini’s museum, please click Google Maps http://lam.bo/peeic Google Local http://lam.bo/peeNT

For more information on visiting Lamborghini’s museum and for the chance to witness firsthand the birth place of Lamborghini’s current model line-up, please visit http://www.lamborghini.com/en/museum/overview/

Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A.

Founded in 1963, Automobili Lamborghini is headquartered in Sant’Agata Bolognese, in Northeastern Italy. The Lamborghini Squadra Corse, presented at the recent Frankfurt motor show, is dedicated to the new Squadra Corse motorsports department. It is the most high-performance street-legal Gallardo ever produced and celebrates the most successful model in the history of Lamborghini. With the introduction of the Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster in 2013, joining the coupé presented in 2011, Lamborghini established yet another landmark in an uninterrupted series of extraordinary, exclusive super sports cars that include the 350 GT, Miura, Espada, Countach, Diablo, Murciélago, and limited series like the Reventón, Sesto Elemento, Aventador J and Veneno. The Veneno, created to celebrate 50 years of Lamborghini in 2013, was produced in only three units and sold at the record price of 3 Million euro.

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