On this page, I’m going to show you the best virtual tours of museums from all over the world.
We’ll highlight links to the museum’s virtual tours, Google Arts & Culture, and include their websites in case you want to know more or would like to visit in person.
Some museums have apps that allow you to do virtual tours using virtual reality and VR apps and some have apps that inspire your kids’ creativity.
Let’s get started!
3D Virtual Exhibitions
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
3D Virtual Exhibitions or V21 Artspace is a site that has produced over 100 arts and culture interactive 3d virtual exhibition tours.
These 3d Virtual Tours are easy to navigate and are similar to using Google Maps’ Street View Function where you click or tap at the location where you want to go or go near an item you want to see closely.
Using the feature similar to Street view, virtual museum tour visitors can go up and down the stairs to see an appreciate more artwork and photos.
Must see from this virtual museum tour are BOND by Terry O’Neill, Always Audrey, etc.
Anne Franke Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
Explore the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family in virtual reality using the ‘Anne Frank House VR’ app.
The app provides a very special view of the Secret Annex. It is the location where Anne Frank and the seven other people hid during WWII.
The VR app is suitable for Oculus Go, Rift and Quest and Gear VR and can be downloaded here.
Alternatively, you can use Google Map’s most popular feature, the Street View to do a virtual tour of Anne Frank’s family home. Google Street View allows you to view room as if you’re actually walking there.
British Museum, London
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The British Museum’s remarkable collection spans over 2 million years of human history and each of the items is presented using Google’s ARTS & CULTURE feature here.
You can organise the items based on popularity, timeline or colour.
Alternatively, you can take a virtual museum tour and view historical artifacts and other items in terms of the time period by going to this site.
British Museum makes use of the Google Map’s Street View Function. You may explore three parts of the Museum, including Parque Nacional Tikal, British Museum’s Outdoor Location, and more importantly, what’s inside the British Museum.
Detroit Institute of Arts
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Detroit Institue of Arts is famous for artworks like The Thinker, Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait, Five Bathers, etc.
Like the British Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts uses Google’s Art and Culture feature that lists art and culture with respect to popularity, timeline, and colour.
Detroit Institue of Arts makes use of the internet to conduct virtual field trips and provide information like this:
You can browse through their extensive collection of arts and culture throughout history.
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Georgia O’Keeffe was a 20th-century American painter and pioneer of American modernism best known for her canvases depicting flowers, skyscrapers, animal skulls and southwestern landscapes. The museum has a Google Arts & Culture site.
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has a virtual museum tour. Unlike other museums, it has its own app that you can download online.
Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Guggenheim Museum is one of Wright’s most famous and most iconic designs, and it was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2019. It has a comprehensive collection of European paintings.
Guggenheim’s website offers a virtual museum tour in the form of pre-recorded videos, which includes other activities like storytelling.
They have the artworks and photos uploaded at Google’s Art and Culture feature.
They don’t have a virtual museum tour nor Street View but here’s a 360-degrees look of what’s inside this museum to give you an idea of what it’s like visiting this museum.
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Hermitage Museum or The State Hermitage Museum is the second-largest art museum in the world!
Hermitage Museum has a virtual museum tour on their site that uses the Panorama app.
Their virtual museum tour Panoramic app is similar to the Google street view except that their Panorama has a smoother transition and is created using Pano2VR.
You can move around by clicking on the white crosshair symbol and you can go to the next space by clicking or tapping the left and right arrow buttons on top.
This museum has a 360-degrees virtual museum tour on their Google Arts & Culture site.
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The High Museum was established in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association. In 1926 Harriet Harwell Wilson High donated her family’s Peachtree Street residence to be used as a museum, and the association was renamed in her honor.
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta has a Google Arts and Culture page.
Enjoy virtual museum tours via their Vimeo Account.
J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
J Paul Getty Museum uses Google Street View to give online visitors a virtual museum tour inside their museum.
There are a lot of notable artworks housed in the J Paul Getty Museum, including popular paintings like Rembrandt laughing, and Allegory of Fortune.
The Museum has its own Google Arts and Culture page.
Louvre Museum Paris
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
The Louvre Museum in Paris is perhaps the most well-known and most-celebrated museum in the world.
Popular artworks include the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Law Code of Hammurabi and many others.
The Louvre has launched its first-ever virtual reality initiative, offering visitors a seven-minute experience of a work titled Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass.
You can use your VR gears to view Mona Lisa as if you’re actually at Louvre plus information on Leonardo da Vinci’s painting styles and techniques.
Louvre Museum in Paris has a 360-degrees Virtual Museum Tour section on its website similar to Google’s Street View.
If you want to look at certain items and know more information, just click on the item.
If you’re using a pc or laptop, just hover on the artwork, if you see an “i” icon like this (representing information), you may click the item to get more information such as the one below.
Revel at what’s outside the Louvre Museum, you can use Google Street View or use 360cities.net, which shows breathtaking 360-degrees images like the one below:
Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP], Sao Paolo, Brazil
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Museu de Arte de São Paulo is Brazil’s first modern museum, built in 1947. It houses a lot of brilliant artworks which you can view via 360-degrees imagery using Google Street View.
Most of the popular artworks can be viewed via Google Arts & Culture.
Met Museum, New York
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Met presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. There are 3 Met Museums in New York: The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer, and The Met Cloisters.
This museum has a Google Arts & Culture page which allows online visitors to preview certain artworks. There are more than 200,000 artworks already uploaded.
360-degrees virtual museum tour can be done using Google Map Street View.
This Museum has 360-degrees videos on its website. They make use of their Youtube account that allows online visitors to look around rather than follow a predetermined direction. A sample of the 360-videos can be found below.
MoMA or The Museum of Modern Art
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was the first museum devoted to the modern era and contemporary art
The Museum of Modern Art has online exhibits and Google Arts & Culture page.
The Virtual Museum Tour includes videos. An example can be found below.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Musee d’Orsay displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914 and is a work of art in itself.
Online visitors can view each artwork on Google Arts & Culture.
The 360-degrees view allows you to take a virtual museum tour.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Museum of Fine Arts is one of the most comprehensive art museums in the world with a collection that includes world-renowned paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cassatt.
This museum houses mummies, sculptures, ceramics, and gold from ancient Egypt, Greece, the Near East, Roman Empire, and African and Oceanic art throughout history.
You can view artworks according to the timeline on the Google Arts & Culture page.
Virtual Museum Tours can be taken using Google’s Street view.
Musei Vaticani, Vatican City
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public art and sculpture museums in the Vatican City.
You can view the stunning artworks and location via their virtual tour app available on their website.
Museum Of London Docklands
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Museum of London’s collection includes over a million objects from London’s history. Many are uploaded in Google Arts & Culture.
However, not all of them are uploaded, so you can access the virtual museum tour to view most of Museum of London’s art collection.
National Gallery Of Arts, Washington DC
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Google Arts & Culture | Website
The National Gallery of Art preserves, collects, exhibits, and fosters an understanding of works of art. It has one of the most extensive art collections uploaded on Google Arts & Culture.
The National Gallery of Art has two apps on their website. One app is for viewing artworks while the other is an interactive kid’s app.
National Gallery, London
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The National Gallery Collection contains over 2,300 works, including many famous works some of them can be seen on Google Arts & Culture.
Use Google’s Street view to take a virtual museum tour of this museum.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea has lived through the history of Korean art. Its museum has a Google Arts & Culture page.
360-degrees virtual museum tours gives you the opportunity to see fantastic views of artworks like these.
National Museum Of US Air Forces
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
The National Museum of the United States Air Force, formerly known as The United States Air Force Museum, is the official museum of the United States Air Force.
This amazing museum houses the best aviation historical items and actual planes and engines which you can view using a 360-degrees app similar to Google Street View.
Images from the virtual museum tour app are clearer compared to Google Street View. You can appreciate details when you zoom in.
A blue play button on the screen if there’s a playable video. View their Virtual Tour App now, some screenshots can be found below.
Natural History Museum, London
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Natural History Museum’s Virtual tour is better than other museums because they use voice commentaries and narration to some of the historical artifacts and items.
If you would like to explore on your own via a virtual museum tour, you can also take a 360-degrees virtual museum tour via the Google Street View Feature.
They also have the normal Google Arts & Culture page too.
National Women’s History Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Google Arts & Culture | Website
The National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) researches, collects, and exhibits women’s social, cultural, economic, and political history in a context of world history.
Aside from their Google Arts & Culture Page, they also have online exhibits which showcases the most notable women in history.
Pergamon Museum, Berlin
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Pergamon Museum is the most popular museum in Berlin and houses art treasures such as the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate. Artworks can also be viewed at Google Arts & Culture.
Online visitors can take a virtual museum tour and view the artworks exactly where they are displayed inside the museum.
Picasso Museum, Barcelona
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
Museu Picasso de Barcelona or Picasso Museum houses Pablo Picasso’s artworks during his formative years.
TIP: Just be careful when you open their page for the virtual tour because a voice narrator will start right away and might surprise you if your volume is too high.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Rijksmuseum is the representative museum of the Netherlands. The Rijksmuseum itself is also a masterpiece, both externally and its interior design.
Its world-famous masterworks from the Dutch Golden Age include the Milkmaid by Vermeer and Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which can be found in their Google Arts & Culture Page.
However, you can also view the masterpieces and other artworks using the virtual tour.
Speaking of virtual tours, this museum offers its online visitors a view of all 3 floors including artworks displayed on the stairways. All 8 museum views can be explored via this link.
Simply look for the circular images like the ones below.
Royal Academy Of Arts, London
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
Royal Academy of Arts also offers virtual tours on their website. Rather than 360-degrees self-tours, online visitors can join online virtual tours with pre-recorded voices. An example of this is Mary Beard’s mythology trail.
Salvatore Dali Museum, Figueres, Spain
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol was a Spanish Surrealist artist whose skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters.
His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, is one of the most recognisable Surrealist paintings.
You can see his other artworks on the Salvatore Dali Museum’s Google Arts & Culture page.
It also has a Street view function so you an take a virtual tour of the museum.
Smithsonian, Washington DC
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the home to one of the largest and most inclusive collections of American art in the world.
This includes contributions from these art masters: John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Helen Frankenthaler, Christo, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Lee Friedlander, Roy Lichtenstein, Nam June Paik, Martin Puryear, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Their Google Arts & Culture page has 4,114 artworks uploaded You can browse through some of their collections there.
You can also take a virtual tour via the Google Street View Map.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
Some scenes of the movie Night At The Museum was filmed here. Each part of this museum is picturesque and it would be a great idea to do a virtual museum tour since it offers a lot amazing things.
Taking a virtual tour in this museum would be very interesting for children.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives and publications.
It is part of the Guggenheim museum network which includes the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Below is a screenshot of its Google Arts & Culture page which includes artworks, publications, and photos.
Tate Britain, London
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Tate Britain (previously called Tate Gallery) is an art museum that is part of the Tate network of galleries in England which houses art from Tudor times, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives.
The museum has a Google Arts & Culture page.
Similar to most museums with virtual tours, it also employs Google Street View Feature. Explore and take advantage of the virtual museum function.
The Museum of Flight
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website
Online visitors can use their VR gears to enjoy the virtual tour and feel as if you’re inside jets and planes.
The National Museum of Computing on Bletchley Park
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The National Museum of Computing’s collection can be viewed on its Google Arts & Culture Page.
This independent museum houses the largest collection of functional historic computers in Europe, including a rebuilt and refurbished Colossus, the world’s first electronic computer and Witch, the world’s oldest working digital computer.
View them using the museum’s virtual tour page.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is also called “Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza”, and features art from the 13th century to the late 20th century.
This museum also has a Google Arts & Culture page.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum provides virtual tours using Google Map Streetview Feature that you can find here.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Uffizi Gallery was created and designed by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de’Medici to house the Grand-ducal Magistratures and artowroks of Tuscany.
Some of the items can be viewed at Google Arts & Culture.
You can enjoy a virtual tour and visit the museum’s areas online using Google Street view.
US Holocaust Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Google Arts & Culture | Website
US Holocaust Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values.
This museum shows photos, news articles, letters, and historical items on its Google Arts & Culture page.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam houses the largest collection of artworks by Vincent van Gogh including 200+ paintings, 500 drawings & 750+ letters.
Some of the artworks can be viewed in Google Art & Culture.
Street View Function gives online visitors a chance to enjoy Vincent van Gogh’s artworks in the comfort of your home.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
VMFA’s permanent collection encompasses nearly 50,000 works of art spanning 6,000 years of world history.
Some of the best artworks were uploaded at Google Arts & Culture.
You can also do a a virtual tour of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) using Google Map Street view feature.
Yale Centre For British Art
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Google Arts & Culture | Website
The Yale Center for British Art houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art from the Elizabethan period to present day.
Check out the artworks at Google Arts & Culture.
Yale Centre for British Art has a virtual tour app that you can download to experience virtual museum tours.
You can also use their web app using your pc or laptop here.
If you enjoyed these museums, you and your kids may also be interested in doing virtual tours in the best virtual zoos in the world, so come check out our article about it.