Do you love art or history? Would you like to visit museums all over the world, but have neither the time nor the money? With virtual tours and Matterport technology, you can now visit a great many museums in every corner of the globe.
Many museums now have a virtual version, so you can enjoy the experience from home. The beauty of these virtual tours is that they open up galleries you might otherwise never have seen.
From France to Australia, here is our list of 10 museum virtual tours online.
1. Saint-Léger Museum of Art and History (Soissons, France)
North-east of Paris, this museum moved into the buildings of the former Saint-Léger abbey in 1933. The virtual tour of the Saint-Léger Museum of Art and History takes you through collections of paintings and sculpture, the cathedral treasury, rich archaeological collections and temporary exhibitions.
Using Matterport technology, the virtual tour describes the museum in both English and French, with links to the museum's website for anyone who wants to find out more.
2. Musée de Vence, Fondation Émile Hugues (Vence, France)
The Musée de Vence occupies the Château de Villeneuve, the former home of the lords of Villeneuve, counts of Provence and lords of Vence. Today it shows artists who lived in or visited Vence, while also exploring the different movements of contemporary art.
The Matterport virtual tour includes embedded images so you can take a close look at the works and read the texts the museum displays.
3. Dalí Theatre-Museum (Figueres, Spain)
Dedicated to the life and work of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, the Dalí Theatre-Museum holds the largest and most varied collection of his work. Alongside Dalí's paintings, the virtual tour features his sculptures, three-dimensional collages, mechanical devices and other curiosities born of his imagination.
The museum's virtual tour is built into its website and is full of information points with images and short anecdotes.
4. Oxford University Museum of Natural History (Oxford, England)
Part of the oldest university in England, this museum houses Oxford's collection of fossils, skeletons and other specimens. The virtual tour shows a collection covering all kinds of educational subjects, from 4.5-billion-year-old meteorites to Darwin's theory of evolution.
Thanks to Matterport's dollhouse view, the museum's wonderful collection is very easy to explore.
5. Warwick Castle (Warwick, England)
Forty minutes from Birmingham and an hour and forty minutes from London, Warwick Castle is a medieval marvel and one of England's leading attractions. In the virtual tour, you can walk through the inside of the castle, learn about its history and admire its architecture.
In this virtual tour, every room in the castle has an information point explaining what it was used for.
6. The National Museum of Computing (Bletchley Park, England)
The National Museum of Computing holds the world's largest collection of working historic computers. The virtual tour lets you follow the history of computing: from the Turing-Welchman Bombe and the Colossus of the 1940s, through the large systems and mainframes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, to the rise of personal computing, mobile computing and the internet.
Descriptions, with links to videos and written explanations, give extra detail and background on the objects shown in this virtual tour.
7. Opera Gallery (New York City, United States)
Opera Gallery is an international gallery specialising in modern and contemporary art, with fourteen locations around the world. It sets out to nurture the links between emerging and established artists. The virtual tour shows works of every kind, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography and video.
The Opera Gallery virtual tour lets you move between three floors with the floor selector, and learn about each work through its information points.
8. The Frick Madison (New York City, United States)
The Frick Madison is the temporary home of the Frick Collection while its main building is being renovated. Unlike the Frick's usual style of display, the works at the Frick Madison are arranged by period and by region. The museum holds precious paintings and sculptures by Bellini, Goya, Houdon and many others.
The Frick Madison has built its virtual tour into its website, with a plan of each floor to make it easy to move from room to room.
9. The Museum of Flight (Seattle, United States)
The Museum of Flight is the largest private air and space museum in the world and attracts more than 500,000 visitors every year. Its collection includes over 150 aircraft, among them the Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Boeing 747s and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
The museum offers several Matterport virtual tours that take you inside dozens of these iconic aircraft.
10. The National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia)
The National Gallery of Victoria is the oldest and most visited gallery in Australia. It hosts a wide range of international and local artists, exhibitions, programmes and events, from contemporary art to major historical exhibitions, by way of fashion and design, architecture, sound and dance.
The gallery's website offers many virtual tours, depending on the exhibition you want to see.
By commissioning a virtual tour, museums can let people who cannot travel discover cultural and historic places. A Matterport 3D tour will also make your museum more visible. To see more museum virtual tours, visit the Matterport website.
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