The British Museum, the Louvre, the Hermitage… If you can’t or don’t want to travel this summer, here are some of the best museums to visit online.

The world of culture is one of the hardest hit by the pandemic that has plagued us since last year, and for this reason, initiatives have emerged to facilitate access to cultural activities. Many museums around the world have launched the option to visit them without leaving home. While it is true that some already had this option, others have recently had to adapt to it.

Among the museums that offer the option to visit them virtually, we find world-renowned ones and smaller ones in our country. Today this is a widespread offer.

• Internationally recognized museums with virtual tour option

1. British Museum (London): it is one of the most important museums in the world.  It can be visited virtually through Google Arts & Culture, which offers a 360° experience through the corridors of the museum, or through the Museums of the World project, where we find a list of objects especially relevant commented by experts from the British Museum itself.
2. Louvre Museum (Paris): the most visited museum in the world made a remodelling of its website in 2020 with the aim of bringing its extensive collection to the public, offering three completely free virtual circuits. This way, we can admire works like La Gioconda, The Code of Hammurabi, or the Venus of Milo from the quiet of our home.
3. Museo del Prado (Madrid): considered the largest art gallery in the world, especially in terms of Spanish, Italian, and Flemish art, it offers the option to review, one by one, all the works on display, being able to approach them in such a way you can see details that you would probably miss on a face-to-face visit.
4. Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence): it may not be one of the best-known museums, but it houses the largest collection of the Renaissance, and features works that had been owned by the Medici. It also allows you to visit virtually each of the rooms, being able to focus on the works that generate the most interest.
5. Dalí Theater-Museum (Figueres): considered the largest surrealist object in the world, it has the largest number of works by this artist, and is part of the so-called Dalinian Triangle. It shows a 360° virtual tour of the most important rooms of the museum.
6. Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam):also in this case, it is Google Arts & Culture that offers the online visit to the museum dedicated to the “Crazy Redhead”, which contains more than 200 paintings by the artist in his permanent collection, apart from other works by 19th century artists.
7. Musée d’Orsay et de l’orangerie (Paris): basically dedicated to Impressionism. Claude Monet himself chose and conditioned this museum to exhibit his “testamentary” works. You can also see other exponents of modern art such as Cézanne, Picasso, Renoir, and Modigliani.
8. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): founded in 1870, today has three headquarters in landmarks in New York, and allows a journey of more than five thousand years of history through the objects and works on display. It has a very complete virtual access, with 360° views, and this online experience accumulates many visitors.
9. Hermitage (St. Petersburg): along with El Prado, is considered one of the largest art galleries in the world. It is housed in six buildings that are part of a huge complex that had been the Palaces and properties of the Tsars of Russia, as were the more than three million works in the collection. It also allows you to take a 360° interactive virtual tour.
10. Vatican Museums (Rome): as their name suggests, they are located in the Vatican City, and are part of the great artistic collection of the Catholic Church, with works such as The Sistine Chapel or The Piety by Michelangelo. Like other museums, it offers a 360° virtual tour on its website.

The aforementioned museums are just some of the best known, but you can find very complete lists of many other cultural options of this type, and even of nearby museums, which also offer some very complete virtual experiences.

• Our land’s museum offer

1. National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona): you can admire works from the Roman period to the twentieth century, and you can virtually visit 173 collections on its website.
2. Museum of History of Catalonia (Barcelona): the online visit does not allow you to visit the whole museum, but you can take a chronological tour through some elements of the exhibition and curiosities from all over the territory.
3. National Museum of Science and Technology of Catalonia (Terrassa): located in a modernist industrial building in Terrassa, both in his face-to-face and virtual visit, it offers an enjoyable tour through the industrial heritage and science.
4. Maricel Museum (Sitges): it offers a tour through the history of Sitges from the 10th century to the first half of the 20th century, through the works owned by Dr. Jesús Pérez-Rosales and the town itself.
5. National Archaeological Museum of Catalonia (Tarragona): located in Tarragona. In it, we can discover the footprints and legacy that the Romans left in the city.

There are no more excuses not to visit a museum where you can admire world-renowned works, of exceptional beauty, and of great historical and cultural value.

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