Virtual Museums

Virtual tour of a physically existing museum

Many of the larger museums and galleries around the world offer access to their collections through a guided tour in a computer-simulated version of some of the museum’s existing exhibitions. Two related forms are dominating these virtual tours: the ‘gallery walk’ where the visitor can move from room to room and look around from different angels and the 360º virtual tour where the visitor can select a spot on a map and have a 360º vision of the surroundings viewed from that spot.

Example: The Louvre in Paris

The extensive Louvre homepage is offered in French, English and Japanese. If you search under ‘museum’ (on the top bar) and enter ‘virtual tours’ you will meet a vast selection of possibilities including Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman art, Islamic art, paintings, sculptures and many more. Architectural views and a tour of Medieval Louvre are also included. The tours require Macromedia Flash Player, which can be downloaded directly from the page.

Example: Latvian Ethnographic Open Air Museum

360º virtual tour where the visitor selects a photograph of a building from a map and is offered a view around inside or outside the building together with historical information. This tour is based on live registrations and gives a very good picture of the physically existing museum in Latvia on a nice and warm summer day.