10 Best Virtual Museum Tours: The Louvre, MoMA, and More

The Louvre. The Van Gogh Museum. The Guggenheim. If those names sit on your bucket list, you do not have to wait for a plane ticket. Ten of the world’s great museums offer virtual tours you can take tonight, for free, in any web browser.

Nothing fully replaces standing in front of a painting. The scale, the texture, the quiet of the room: those are worth the trip when you can make it. But a good virtual tour is the next best thing, and for working artists it is more than a novelty. It is a study hall stocked with the best teachers who ever lived.

What are the best virtual museum tours?

The ten best virtual museum tours run from the Louvre in Paris to La Galleria Nazionale in Rome, and every one of them is free. Some live on the museum’s own site, others on Google Arts and Culture, and all of them open in a normal browser with nothing to install.

1. The Louvre

Home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the Louvre is the most famous museum in the world, and its online tours set the standard for everyone else. Start with the Egyptian Antiquities rooms, then wander wherever the galleries pull you. If the Mona Lisa leaves you hungry for more masterworks, our guide to famous historical oil paintings is a natural next stop.

2. The Art Institute of Chicago

One of America’s oldest and largest museums, the Art Institute holds more than 300,000 works of art spanning five millennia. Its virtual offerings include two of the most recognizable paintings in American art, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and Grant Wood’s American Gothic. If those two speak to you, you will enjoy our look at Realism in art history.

3. MoMA, New York

Founded in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art stands shoulder to shoulder with the best museums in the world. Its Google Arts and Culture collection is where you go to study Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and Henri Rousseau’s The Dream up close, closer than the crowd in the physical gallery would ever let you get.

4. The Guggenheim Museum, New York

The Guggenheim first opened its doors in 1939 and holds some of the planet’s most impressive works of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and contemporary art. Its Google Arts and Culture page lets you explore the collection along with Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous spiral rotunda. If the Impressionist rooms light you up, try our 4 tips for painting like an Impressionist.

5. The Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Whether you see it in person or online, Berlin’s Pergamon Museum is always impressive. Its virtual exhibits include the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and the monument that gives the museum its name, the Pergamon Altar. The building itself is closed for a years-long renovation, which makes the virtual tour the only way to walk these halls for now.

6. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

This tour lets you see six floors of South Korea’s national collection without traveling farther than your desk. The exhibits feature artwork from around the world, and the museum is a must for lovers of contemporary art.

7. Natural History Museum, London

Millions of people tour this museum every year, and its virtual version introduces you to mineralogy, botany, and zoology exhibits on any given day. For artists who love filling sketchbooks with the natural world, this tour is a treat. Draw from the images you see online, or gather ideas for the day you can sketch in the building itself.

8. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Established by an Act of Congress in 2003, this is the only national museum of its kind. Its digital resources guide opens a deep view of African American history and culture through a rich set of online exhibits.

9. The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

No list of virtual museum tours would be complete without the museum devoted to one of the most beloved artists who ever lived. Virtual visitors can study many of Van Gogh’s masterpieces, and parents will find coloring pages and stories made for kids.

10. La Galleria Nazionale, Rome

Rome’s national gallery of modern and contemporary art offers a virtual tour with around 500 works from its collection, including pieces by Monet, Canova, and Boldini.

Why should artists take virtual museum tours?

Because museum study is one of the oldest training methods in art, and a virtual tour removes every barrier between you and the work. For centuries, art students learned by planting an easel in front of a master’s canvas and looking hard. A virtual tour gives you the same access without the airfare, and the zoom button often gets you closer to the brushwork than a velvet rope ever would.

Use the tours as a working library. Study how Hopper holds a composition together with light. Trace how Van Gogh builds movement from individual strokes. Notice the color decisions that keep pulling your eye back. Every painting in these collections is a lesson waiting for someone to slow down and read it, and our art history and famous paintings library pairs well with the looking.

How do you get the most out of a virtual museum tour?

Treat the tour like a studio session, not a scroll. Pick one museum, give it an hour, and bring your sketchbook. Choose three works and sketch them straight from the screen. Then pick one painting and study a single decision in it: the value structure, the edges, or the color. When a color choice stops you and you want to know why, our guide to the symbolism of color is a good companion.

Then close the laptop and go to your easel while the looking is still fresh. The point of all this study is not a full notebook. It is what happens to your own work when the masters start whispering over your shoulder.

Frequently asked, answered fast

Take one tour this week with your sketchbook open. And if the looking turns into an itch to make something of your own, the 2-Week Challenge is a friendly place to start.

Frequently asked questions

Are virtual museum tours free?

Yes. Every tour on this list is free. The Google Arts and Culture tours (MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Pergamon Museum, the Seoul museum, and La Galleria Nazionale) cost nothing, and the tours hosted by the Louvre, the Van Gogh Museum, and the others are free on their official sites.

Which virtual museum tours include the most famous paintings?

The Louvre holds the Mona Lisa, MoMA's online collection includes Van Gogh's The Starry Night and Rousseau's The Dream, and the Art Institute of Chicago shows Nighthawks and American Gothic. The Van Gogh Museum tour gathers many of Van Gogh's masterpieces in one place.

What do I need to take a virtual museum tour?

A web browser and an internet connection. These tours run on Google Arts and Culture or on the museum's own site, so there is nothing to install. A laptop or tablet gives you a bigger view than a phone, which matters when you are studying brushwork.