Free virtual tours of 2,500 museums around the world

As an 18 year old high school student, I was able to snag a free seat on a field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, just a little trip to Boston from my hometown of Claremont, NH. In 1998, my high school had just lost its accreditation, I had just flunked pre-calculus for the second year in a row, and I had absolutely no direction in my life. Three months later I would be kicked out of college for a 0.6 first-semester GPA, to begin the very long, awkward journey of finding myself. This takes many more years before the first success.

But that trip to this museum, one included on this website as a virtual tour, planted a seed, deep down in my mind that would take years to spout. The museum is a Venetian palace, and at the center, draped by shadows that lurch outwards from receding hallways, lies a majestic courtyard, adorned with crenulation and dentils that mesmerize and steal the time from day. A trashy townie punk stood there aghast that beauty could render so closely, and knew there for maybe the first time that a world beyond home awaited.

I never got a chance to thank the man that let me sneak aboard that bus, but many times already I have felt the spirit of sharing to an outsider that access, and evermore will I continue for it is only during these moments that we can so easily take stock of what we've been.

Support the arts.

"Walking tour new York city" "Walking tour paris" "Walking tour ..."

Pick the longer videos on YouTube or filter for them. I throw one on mute and just leave it on while I'm on my couch working. Nice to see people up and about while you're alone.

Also, you notice people coughing/sneezing way more now even if the video is years old.

Is it strange that I would enjoy these far more if they were embedded in a walkable version of the museum running in a game engine? Like "virtually visit a museum" is a lot more appealing than "look at pictures of things that are in museums".

Scan the World - 3D printable cultural artifacts: https://www.myminifactory.com/scantheworld/

Collection of public domain cultural heritage 3D models on Sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/nebulousflynn/collections/cc0

FWIW, I created a tool that automagically walks through a Google street view (originally done for road trips through cities). I've now added some of those museums. I leave it running and occasionally look where it has led me to --> https://roadtraveller.herokuapp.com/

Since last Friday I've been making my Zoom virtual background a daily rotation of artwork. It's been a fun and educational experience for me (I'm no art expert, just a casual fan of museums) and I think my friends and co-workers have enjoyed it. When you're mostly stuck at home all day it's nice to have a daily "new" to look forward to.

I've been recording my choices and when this is over I'll have a little "Zoom Museum" as a kind of artistic memorial of the pandemic.

This link is a great source for new art, so thank you OP!

Virtual tour? Since when is a virtual tour a collection of pictures in a random order? Walking in a museum is also about the sense of space and how everything is organized. Such abuse of words.

I have sent a suggestion to Google to combine this with Google Hangout Meet, so quarantined friends can see and talk to each other while watching the images. I also suggested to split virtual visitors into random tourist groups, so if you visit the virtual museum alone you can be joined by others if you want to... and they should add virtual tours if they don't have them yet, where a real museum guide joins the group and gives a tour.

I hope they read my suggestion and can implement these features.

Google puts the museum hours at the bottom of the museum landing pages. These hours are unlikely to be valid for the time being, with so many museums being closed. How often are the hours scraped and reposted? Or were these entered manually? It’s a nitpick, of course, but much of good design is attention to details like this. I would have left this section out; it’s unlikely this info would ever be maintained correctly.

These are worth checking out as well:

https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/arts-culture

This is awesome, thanks for sharing. What are some other similar resources to be able to explore the world virtually?

Not quite a tour, but some really well put together content in my opinion

This is where VR is needed

I tried some of them. All of them have a horribly low UX and UI. That means they are 100% unusable. Please hire some Silicon Valley engineers and make SPEED a feature. As it's now', it is pretty much totally worthless. I'm sorry to say so. Take it as real feedback. I tried it once, horribly slow, I'll never go back.

This is a good way to "burn through" a huge audience, which will remember you as a "slow, hard, and unusable service", and never come back. It won't matter then how hard you try to push or market.