We’re all trying to keep boredom at bay during the COViD-19 outbreak. It’s easy to fall into a Netflix binge session. Luckily there’s more than one way to keep yourself interested while indoors: Virtual tours!
Browse the halls of some of the world’s most prestigious cultural institutions, like The Met, The Louvre museum and even, Sistine Chapel.
Take your pick and enjoy this virtual journey through art and time.
- The Louvre (Paris, France)
-
- The most visited museum in the world, The Louvre features masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo, and Hammurabi’s Code. The Louvre has free online tours of seven virtual galleries on display, including Egyptian antiquities.
- The Vatican Museum (Vatican City)
-
- It 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. Its website offers a virtual tour of the chapel’s most stunning sites, including allowing you to marvel at Michelangelo’s ceiling without straining your neck..
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Washington D.C.)
-
- The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History features over 145 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts – the most extensive natural history collection in the world. The museum has dozens of different online exhibits that can all be accessed on its website.
- Tokyo National Museum (Tokyo, Japan)
-
- The Tokyo National Museum is the oldest and largest art museum in Japan. It includes a collection of artworks from across Asia, ancient and medieval Japanese art, and Asian art along the silk road.
- The Museum of Modern Art (New York City, New York)
-
- MoMA’s collection includes more than 150,000 individual pieces, like Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans or Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and approximately 22,000 films and 4 million film stills.
- Victoria and Albert Museum (London, England)
-
- Under its roof, it holds 5,000 years of art from Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa. Its collection of sculptures, prints, furniture costumes, and ceramics is among the world’s largest and most comprehensive. The virtual tour offers 11 different online exhibits ranging from fashion to textiles.
- Museo Galileo (Florence, Italy)
-
- Dedicated to astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei, the museum has a collection of over 5,000 ancient scientific instruments, such as the telescope Galileo used to discover the satellites of Jupiter.
- National Museum of Computing (Bletchley Park, England)
-
- Dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems, National Museum of Computing is home to the world’s largest collection of working historic computers dating back to the 1940s, including a rebuilt Mark 2 Colossus computer. On the virtual tour, viewers can move around galleries to look at the machines and their descriptions with links to videos for more information.
- Tate Modern (London, England)
-
- Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of contemporary art in the world and hosts the work of artists such as Andy Warhol and Aubrey Beardsley. The Museum has videos on YouTube, where they give viewers an in-depth look into its many exhibits.
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, Texas)
-
- One of the largest museums in the U.S., The Museum of Fine arts, Houston, features 64,000 works from 6 continents. The collection places emphasis on Latin American Art, Photography, and Renaissance and Baroque painting and sculptures. The museum has 12 online exhibits available for viewing in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture.
Of course, virtual visits are no substitute for the real thing. But they do give us a bit of change from our regular binging habits. So, let’s check out these museums and look forward to a time where we can see them in person.