national gallery of art london virtual tour

The National Gallery, London

London, United Kingdom

The National Gallery Collection contains over 2,300 works, including many famous works, such as van Eyck’s 'Arnolfini Portrait', Velázquez’s 'Rokeby Venus', Turner’s 'Fighting Temeraire' and Van Gogh’s 'Sunflowers'.

All major traditions of Western European painting are represented from the artists of late medieval and Renaissance Italy to the French Impressionists.

- 13th- to 15th-century paintings: Duccio, Uccello, van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli, Dürer, Memling, Bellini

- 16th-century paintings: Leonardo, Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Holbein, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titian, Veronese

- 17th-century paintings: Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Claude, Rembrandt, Cuyp, Vermeer

- 18th- to early 20th-century paintings: Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Ingres, Degas, Cézanne, Monet, Van Gogh

Read more on the The National Gallery, London website

The Collection

• Claude Monet 14
• Paolo Veronese 11
• Johannes Vermeer 5
• Tintoretto 5
• Leonardo da Vinci 4
• Rembrandt 4
• Peter Paul Rubens 3
• Sandro Botticelli 3
• J. M. W. Turner 2
• Hans Holbein the Younger 2
• Gustav Klimt 1
• Hieronymus Bosch 1
• Gustave Courbet 1
• Jan van Eyck 1
• Georges Seurat 1
• Nicolas Poussin 1
• Piero della Francesca 1
• Oil paint 207
• Colored pencil 1
• Renaissance 125
• Italian Renaissance 82
• Venetian painting 33
• Northern Renaissance 27
• Mannerism 17
• High Renaissance 17
• Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting 17
• Modern art 12
• Dutch Golden Age 11
• German Renaissance 11
• Impressionism 8
• Classicism 3
• Romanticism 2
• Gothic art 1
• Florentine painting 1
• American Realism 1
• Sienese School 1
• Ashcan School 1
• United Kingdom 19
• Walthamstow 2
• London Borough of Waltham Forest 2
• Switzerland 1
• Jerusalem 1
• Newcastle upon Tyne 1
• Artemisia Gentileschi 21
• Orazio Gentileschi 5
• Nicodemus 2
• Holofernes 2
• Lazarus of Bethany 1
• Saint Lucy 1
• Belshazzar 1
• Mary of Clopas 1
• Nicholas of Tolentino 1
• Peter of Verona 1
• Saint Apollonia 1
• Hephaestion 1
• Christina of Bolsena 1
• Christina of Denmark 1
• Saint Thomas Aquinas 1

Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

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Artemisia Gentileschi's life among the great patrons, artists and intellectuals of her day

Monet: The Water Lily Pond

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London National Gallery Virtual Tour

London National Gallery 

The National Gallery in London is my all time favourite! It has this peace and tranquil atmosphere, large halls, incredible pieces of artwork that I want to come and explore more and more. This time however, I decided to embark on a virtual tour of The National Gallery . 

A place to reflect

I visited the National Gallery London twice after it opened its doors again in the summer 2020. I was over the moon to be able to wonder the halls and marvel at the ancient art. But at the same time I wanted to have a way to explore the works more in depth. Another thing,  let’s be honest reading all the plaques next to those amazing paintings can be quite tiresome. So when I discovered the gallery has a virtual tour that I can visit sitting in my living room, I immediately jumped at it.  

The National Gallery has some incredible things on display. It was founded in 1824 and since then it has accumulated over 2,300 paintings dating dating from the mid-13th century to 1900s. They have a splendid permanent collection, as well as temporary exhibitions. There is always something going on in the gallery. 

My favourite part is the section of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. So many years of human culture collected in one place. It’s mesmerising, it makes you appreciate how far we’ve gone as a species, and how much there is still to learn.

Can art be remedy for the sole? Embark on the National Gallery virtual tour

There is a certain stillness in the halls of the gallery. Certain pieces of artwork move you. Sometimes they help you understand things, get over something or just be present, meditate in the moment. But you don’t have to be physically present to start discovering the stories behind art works. You can learn about the world, history, humanity and culture virtually. So take this National Gallery London virtual tour today.

It may not provide direct answers, but it will definitely broaden your horizons or even entirely change your perspective! 

What’s next? How about checking out Christmas in London 2020 article?

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Virtual Travel

A Smithsonian magazine special report

Smart News | March 20, 2020

Ten Museums You Can Virtually Visit

Museums are closing their doors amid the coronavirus crisis, but many offer digital exhibitions visitors can browse from the comfort of home

Nadine Daher

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, museums and cultural institutions across the globe are closing their doors to the public. But while visitors can no longer roam the halls of these institutions, virtual tools and online experiences mean anyone with an internet connection can browse world-class collections from home.

The Smithsonian Institution , of course, has its own array of virtual tours, experiences and educational resources . Among the other experiences on offer: Scroll through an extensive trove of 3-D photographs from the Minneapolis Institute of Art , explore online exhibits from the National Women’s History Museum in Virginia, or admire artistic masterpieces from the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Spain. Additionally, around 2,500 museums and galleries, including the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are offering virtual tours and presenting online collections via the Google Arts and Culture portal.

For those in search of armchair travel inspiration, Smithsonian magazine has compiled a list of ten museums that have found new ways to fulfill their critical mission of cultivating creativity and spreading knowledge.

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Home to the world’s second largest private collection of art, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza owns masterpieces by giants of virtually every art movement—to name just a few, Jan van Eyck, Titian, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Picasso and Dalí. To spotlight these artistic treasures, the Madrid museum offers an array of multimedia resources . Users can take a virtual tour of the entire building (or a thematic tour covering such topics as food, sustainability, fashion and even “inclusive love”); browse current and closed exhibits ; and watch behind-the-scenes videos featuring interviews, lectures and technical studies.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Committed to offering a culturally rewarding experience since opening its doors in 2013, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (MMCA) has established itself as a prominent cultural platform and leader in Korean art. In collaboration with Google Arts and Culture, the MMCA is now offering a virtual tour of its collections. This experience takes visitors through six floors of modern and contemporary art from Korea and around the world. Those seeking an educational walkthrough can follow along by tuning into curator-led recorded tours.

The Anne Frank House

The Anne Frank House , established in cooperation with the famed diarist’s father, Otto, in 1957, strives to inform the public through educational programs and tours of the building where the teenager and her family hid during World War II. To delve deeper into the story detailed in Frank’s diary, online visitors can watch videos about her life; virtually explore the Secret Annex ; look around the house where she lived before going into hiding; and view the Google Arts and Culture exhibition “ Anne Frank: Her Life, Her Diary, Her Legacy .”

The Vatican Museums

Home to some 70,000 artworks and artifacts spanning centuries, continents and mediums, the 5.5-hectare Vatican Museums are among Italy’s finest cultural institutions. Virtual visitors can tour seven different sections of the sprawling complex, enjoying 360-degree views of the Sistine Chapel , perhaps best known for Michelangelo’s ceiling and Last Judgment fresco; Raphael’s Rooms , where the Renaissance artist’s School of Athens resides; and lesser-known but equally sumptuous locations such as the Pio Clementino Museum, the Niccoline Chapel and the Room of the Chiaroscuri.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

“Since its founding, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has maintained a belief in the transformative powers of art,” reads the Manhattan museum’s website . “In uncertain times such as these, art can provide both solace and inspiration.”

In a nod to this mission, the Guggenheim , a cultural center and educational institution devoted to modern and contemporary art, has opened up its collections to online visitors. The building itself, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is an architectural masterpiece; audiences can listen to an audio guide of its history or journey up its spiral halls via a Google Arts and Culture virtual tour . For those who want to take a deeper dive into the museum’s collections, the Guggenheim’s online database features some 1,700 artworks by more than 625 artists.

The London National Gallery

Take a virtual tour of 18 gallery rooms, enjoy a panoramic view of the museum’s halls and click through a wide collection of artistic masterpieces using the National Gallery ’s virtual tools . Based in London, this museum houses more than 2,300 works reflecting the Western European tradition between the 13th and 19th centuries. Collection highlights include Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and J.M.W Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire .

NASA Research Centers

For those fascinated by space exploration, NASA offers online visitors the chance to take a behind-the-scenes look inside its facilities. Visitors can take virtual tours of the organization’s research centers, where aeronautic technology is developed and tested, and learn more about the functions of different facilities. The online tour of Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, covers 16 locations, including the Flight Research Hangar and the Katherine Johnson Computational Research Facility. The virtual tour of the Glenn Research Center in Ohio, meanwhile, takes visitors inside facilities such as the Supersonic Wind Tunnel, where high speed flight is researched, and the Zero Gravity Research Facility, where microgravity research is conducted.

The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City

Home to the world’s largest ancient Mexican art collection, in addition to an extensive collection of ethnographic objects, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City preserves the country’s indigenous legacy and celebrates its cultural heritage. In collaboration with Google Arts and Culture, the museum has made some 140 items available for online visitors to explore from their homes. Among the objects available for viewing are the famous Aztec calendar sun stone and the striking jade death mask of ancient Mayan king Pakal the Great.

San Francisco’s De Young Museum

One of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco , the de Young Museum ’s new copper-clad building in Golden Gate Park combines art with architecture. The collection features a priceless array of American art dating from the 17th to the 21st centuries, as well as artifacts from Africa and Oceania, modern and contemporary art, costumes, and textiles. Through Google Arts and Culture, the de Young offers 11 exhibits, including “ Cult of the Machine ” and “ Ruth Asawa: A Working Life .”

Housed in a large fortress along the banks of Paris’ Seine River, the Louvre regularly tops rankings of the most-visited museums in the world, with millions of visitors flocking to its halls in search of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa , the Venus de Milo and other instantly recognizable artworks. Virtual tours offered by the Louvre include a walkthrough of the Egyptian antiquities wing and a view of the museum’s moat, which was built in 1190 to protect Paris from invaders.

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Nadine Daher | | READ MORE

Nadine Daher is a digital intern at Smithsonian magazine. She is a senior at Northwestern, where she studies journalism and international studies.

The National Gallery virtual tour

This virtual tour of the National Gallery in London, launched in 2016, allows users to access the museum virtually using Google Streetveiw style navigation. It also offers users to access ‘stories / further information associated with particular exhibits. For 15 exhibits, users can use their mouse to scroll informative text and zoom-in on specific elements of the paintings.

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These 15 Famous Museums Offer Virtual Tours You Can Take from Your Couch

Experience the best museums — from London to Mexico City — in the comfort of your own home.

If you're a dedicated art lover, you likely go to great lengths to visit renowned museums and galleries. But even when you’re not traveling, you can still get a taste of the masterpieces, artifacts, and architecture at many famous institutions — and get inspired for future trips while you're at it.

Google Arts & Culture teamed up with more than 1,200 museums and galleries around the world to create a collection of online exhibits and virtual tours . Other museums have their own virtual tours, too, such as the Vatican Museums and the Louvre , which features a selection of exhibitions on their websites.

Top 5 Can’t Miss

• View legendary artifacts like the Rosetta Stone on a virtual stroll through the British Museum.
• Gaze up at the Sistine Chapel’s divine ceiling without the crowds at the Vatican Museums.
• The Met’s immersive 360-degree VR videos are arguably the best virtual museum tours.
• Get a glimpse of the four locations of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, on a Google Street View tour.
• Peruse some of Van Gogh's most iconic works in the artist's namesake Amsterdam museum.

The British Museum, London

This iconic museum located in the heart of London allows virtual visitors to tour the Great Court, which was given a striking contemporary redesign in 2000. Move through other galleries to discover ancient artifacts like the Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies.

Vatican Museums

MihaiDancaescu / Getty Images

The next best thing to an after-hours tour , the Vatican Museums offers virtual access to more than a dozen of its galleries and richly decorated spaces. Explore the sumptuous murals of Raphael's Rooms and the Sistine Chapel, where you can zero in on Michelangelo's famous ceiling.

The Met, New York City

While you can explore highlights of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's encyclopedic collection — including the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur — via Google Arts & Culture , the institution offers its own virtual reality tours. The Met 360° Project comprises six videos that can be viewed with a VR headset for an immersive experience, complete with ambient soundtracks.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Don Eim/Travel + Leisure

One of Korea's popular museums can be accessed from anywhere around the world. Google's virtual tour gives you a taste of the museum's four locations with Street View visits and online exhibits. For a deeper dive, check out the museum's website for video walk-throughs of select exhibitions, including immersive VR versions.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Anyone who's a fan of this tragic, ingenious painter can see his works up close (or, almost up close ) by virtually visiting this museum, home to the largest collection of art by Vincent van Gogh. Check out some of his most iconic paintings, including "Sunflowers" and "The Potato Eaters."

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This renowned American art museum offers three online exhibits through Google. An overview of American fashion from 1740 to 1895 features watercolors of garments from the colonial and Revolutionary eras. You can also browse through works from Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch genre painters of the period and take an in-depth look at an early work by Leonardo da Vinci.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

If you can't get to D.C., take a stroll among the historic planes, rockets, and other craft on display at the country's top air and space museum . Check out the Wright Brothers' first bona fide plane, the Wright Flyer, which took to the skies in 1903, and astronaut Neil Armstrong's spacesuit from the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Guggenheim, New York City

NurPhoto / Getty Images

Google's Street View feature lets visitors tour the Guggenheim's famous spiral staircase without ever leaving home. From there, you can discover incredible works of art from the impressionist, post-impressionist, modern, and contemporary eras.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

European artworks from as far back as the eighth century can be found in this California art museum. Take a Street View tour to discover a huge collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, manuscripts, and photographs.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

You can virtually walk through this popular museum that houses dozens of famous French works from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Get a peek at paintings and sculptures by Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Rodin, among others.

Pergamon Museum, Berlin

As one of Germany's largest museums, Pergamon has a lot to offer — even if you can't physically be there. This historical museum is home to plenty of ancient artifacts including the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and, of course, the Pergamon Altar.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Explore masterpieces from the Dutch Golden Age, including works by Vermeer and Rembrandt. Google offers a Street View tour of this iconic museum, so you can feel as if you're actually wandering its halls.

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Housed in a purpose-built 16th-century palace, the Uffizi Gallery showcases the art collection amassed by the wealthy and powerful de' Medici family. Today, anyone can wander its halls from anywhere in the world to view world-famous works like Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus."

MASP, São Paulo

The nonprofit Museu de Arte de São Paulo was Brazil's first modern museum. Artworks placed on clear, raised frames make it seem like they're hovering in midair. Take a virtual tour to experience the wondrous display for yourself.

Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City

Getty Images / Andrew Hasson

Enter the world of 20th-century artist Frida Kahlo with a Street View tour of several spaces in Casa Azul, the modest, vivid blue-painted house where she was born, now the Frida Kahlo Museum . You can tour her studio and peek into other personal spaces like the kitchen and lush courtyard garden as well as view works by Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera.

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You can do virtual tours of almost every major London museum and gallery

Life without art and museums is just a whole lot of Netflix and cheap lager, that’s what self-isolation has taught me. Good heavens, I miss museums. The smell, the light, the people, the ART. I really miss art. But it’s good to know that way before everything went crazy last year, most of London’s museums digitised their collections and even created virtual tours of their spaces. If you miss those places as much as I do, especially now that we're deep into yet another lockdown, then this might just be the balm your restless soul needs. From Tate Modern through to the Natural History Museum, here are our favourite virtual tours of our most beloved London cultural institutions.

Tate Modern

Photograph: Facebook/Tate

The Tate’s collection is staggering: Monet, Picasso, Rothko, all the big names. In this tour, Tate Modern’s director Frances Morris takes you on a tour of one of the Tate’s new buildings, showing you works by Louise Bourgeois, Carl Andre and plenty of others. For some reason, Nick Grimshaw’s there too. I don’t know why. I don’t like it.

The Courtauld Gallery of Art

Photograph: Courtauld

This is a virtual tour of a museum that was shut even before the current crisis. The Courtauld’s been closed for refurbishment for ages, but cleverly created this digital tour for posterity’s sake. It’s room by room, so start at the beginning with Cranach the Elder’s ‘Adam and Eve’, scoot through the portraits of old dead people in room four and then head straight for the Impressionist and modernist delights of rooms six and seven. Van Gogh, Manet, Kandinsky? Yes please!

The National Portrait Gallery

Photograph: National Portrait Gallery

Ah, London’s museum Marmite. The NPG is filled with stuff you either love or despise with a hatred so intense it’s all-consuming. ‘The Cholmondeley Ladies’ painting? Amazing, love it. The portrait of Ed Sheeran? I’d rather stab my eyes out with a pair of tweezers. But don’t listen to me, take the tour and decide for yourself.

The National Gallery

Photograph: National Gallery

This one’s done in collaboration with Google Street View, so you get all the thrills of scouring your local streets to see if they caught you picking your nose, but with paintings instead. The National Gallery’s collection has some of the greatest artists who ever lived – Renaissance masters, Baroque painters and Impressionist adventurers – and there is nowhere better to lose yourself for an afternoon in London. Plus, you get to stand in exactly the right spot to see the skull straighten out in Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’. And online, there are no Italian schoolkids with giant backpacks getting between you and the Raphael. Heaven.

The British Museum

Photograph: British Museum

Woo, things were hotting up for a while there with Brexit. As Britain formally withdrew from the European Union, bills were being drafted in Brussels that would basically force the British Museum to give the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece. The CV crisis has put the kibosh on all that for now, so there are probably some very relieved people at the BM. But in the meantime, let’s all enjoy it online while we can (and the mummies, obviously: everyone loves the mummies).

Want more virtual art exhibitions? Have a look at this heartbreaking show we’ve part-hosted  here .

Then check out more   virtual tours of museums around the world .

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

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National Gallery Virtual Tours

The National Gallery website features virtual tours of the Gallery allowing visitors to explore one of the greatest collections of paintings in the comfort of your home.

The Google virtual tour takes a look at some of the Renaissance masterpieces with panoramic views of the Gallery in 360 degrees. Includes masterpieces from Northern Italy, the Netherlands and Germany including works by Tirian, Veronese and Holbein.

Take the tour Here

The National Gallery has teamed up with Oculus using Matterport’s 3D camera technology to create a virtual reality experience of the Sainsbury Wing.

The immersive experience invites you to step into the Gallery’s collection of Early Renaissance paintings from 1200 to 1500.

Enjoy over 270 paintings in virtual reality with a VR headset, or browse a 360 tour on your desktop or mobile Here

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