Virtual Tours of the World

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1853015

We ended up canceling another visit to Europe this year because of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. This started me thinking about all the virtual tours online. One of my favorites is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam but the list could go on and on to include hundreds of other museums and interesting locations around the world. Google Arts and Culture has a huge collection of "Street View" tours of famous locations. Here is a link to the Google Street View Tour of Stonehenge in England.

Stonehenge

I could list dozens of these opportunities but it is easier to just do a search for virtual tours with the subject. For example, if I search for virtual tours in Europe, I get thousands of results from castles to museums to entire cities. The Rijksmuseum has virtual tours and over 700,000 high-resolution images of objects including Rembrandt paintings.

Of course, you aren't limited to Europe. You can tour places such as Angkor Wat in 360-degree images. Right now, all of these places and museums are likely closed to the public because of the pandemic but you can visit them online for free. Here is the Louvre.

https://petitegalerie.louvre.fr/visite-virtuelle/saison5/

You can even take a virtual tour of the Grand Canyon and virtually hike down the Bright Angel Trail to the bottom of the Canyon. See the following video.

Explore the Grand Canyon with Google Maps

There is really no end to the ways you can discover the world online.