World Wonders Project

Bringing to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world.

google cultural institute virtual tours

The World Wonders Project brings to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world. Together with partners including UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund and Getty Images, we have brought world heritage sites online so that they can be explored by people around the world and preserved for future generations.

The World Wonders Project also presents a valuable resource for students and scholars and offers an innovative way to teach history and geography in schools. Primary and secondary school teachers can download teacher guides and lesson plans from the website for free and use them in their classroom.

Closer to world heritage

Using Street View technology, the site allows you to navigate virtually around some of the most important, historical and beautiful world heritage sites through panoramic street-level images, experiencing these places almost as if you were there. Take a trip to Italy to see the archaeological areas of Pompeii , to Australia to explore the hundreds of miles of beautiful scenery at Shark Bay or to Japan to step inside the haunting Hiroshima Memorial Dome . You can also read about each place’s history, watch videos on YouTube, browse the photo gallery or explore our 3D-models to complete your virtual journey.

Travelling around the world is easy

You can explore the website with the help of drop down menus at the top of the page and select sites to visit based either on the country or the type of place: historic sites; palaces and gardens or regions and landscapes. Alternatively, you can use the image carousel or the spinning globe to navigate around and dive into a location that grabs your attention.

Behind the scenes

Using the Street View car we’ve been able to visit many beautiful places around the world and put the imagery on Street View. However, some of the world heritage sites aren’t accessible by car so we had to develop new technology to be able to record these places. We developed a bicycle-based camera system that is able to collect imagery of places such as trails, parks, gardens and even archaeological areas, railways and rivers. The collected images are then digitised and stitched together to a continuous 360-degree image that can be explored with Street View on Google Maps.

Google Arts & Culture

Partner with us

We can help digitize, manage, and publish your collection online. With our easy-to-use tools, your stories can be told beautifully to a global audience.

google cultural institute virtual tours

The Biodiversity Wall, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Germany

Digitize your collection Learn more about the digitization tools available to partners of Google Arts & Culture, including Art Camera, Museum View and Tabletop Scanner technologies. Art Camera

Photograph and preserve your collection in ultra high-resolution with our custom-built Art Camera. The system is quick and easy to use: a painting can be digitized in an hour or less.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Virtual tours

Create seamless 360° virtual tours with our specially designed Street View tools and invite global audiences to tour your institution.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Tabletop Scanner

Digitize two-dimensional objects like photographs, drawings, paintings, and manuscripts quickly and at scale.

Organize, curate and publish

Share the stories of your collection with the world through our website and mobile app (on Android and iOS ). We can support you with tools for collection management, publishing and analytics.

Organize, curate and publish

Digital Exhibitions

Create immersive digital exhibitions using zoom, video, audio and viewing notes.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Search for your favorite artworks, where to see them in-person and the artists who made them.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Chrome Browser

Share your artworks with millions of people every time they open a new tab in Chrome.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Chromecast Backdrop

Show images from your collection as the rotating background on TVs or large screens.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Content Embedding

Use the high-resolution image zoom viewer and storytelling tools on your website.

google cultural institute virtual tours

The Lab is where tech and creative communities come together to share ideas and create new experiments. Here our team collaborates with engineers, artists, curators and creative coders to help drive innovation and creativity.

Explore the collections of more than 2000 cultural institutions from around the world.

Guggenheim Bilbao

  • International edition
  • Australia edition
  • Europe edition

The 4th-century Admonitions Scroll, as seen on the Google Cultural Institute site

British Museum exhibits viewable online thanks to Google partnership

Google Cultural Institute digitises nearly 5,000 objects to allow virtual tour of museum

From the Carnelian seal-stone of the Vehdin-Shapur to a 20th-century squirrel parka worn by the Yup’ik of Alaska , the British Museum and Google have announced details of a digital partnership allowing people to view in detail nearly 5,000 objects online.

The project is one of the biggest yet by the Google Cultural Institute which, since 2011, has been putting museum collections online and using its Street View technology to allow virtual tours.

Neil MacGregor , the soon-to-depart director of the British Museum, called it “a very important day in the history of the British Museum” because it made possible the 18th-century dream of the museum being a collection of the world, for the world.

“That Enlightenment fantasy, about 25 years ago became an internet possibility, and today, thanks to the Google Cultural Institute, it is a practical reality. Every person on the planet, whether they are in Brazil or China, Mozambique or India, will be able to walk round the British Museum . They will be able to use the collection as if it were their own collection and explore the world in their own way.”

A Google employee photographs exhibits at the British Museum.

He hopes it will encourage more people to visit the museum in person. “It allows them to come better informed; to look and not just to see,” he said.

The museum already has a strong internet presence and 3m objects in the collection are already available to see online. But they mostly have an academic audience and it does not have the reach of the new partnership, said Chris Michaels, the museum’s digital head.

So far, there are 4,859 objects available to look at in detail online. They include one of the museum’s most important Chinese scrolls – 4th-century Admonitions scroll , which is only ever available to view for a few months of the year because it is so fragile. It is available to see in particular zoom detail after Google spent three days photographing it.

The indoor Street View footage meanwhile took 15 months to film because it had to be done out of normal visiting hours. “It is a huge organisational process for a place as big as this,” said Michaels.

The Museum of the World microsite

The museum joins around 800 other cultural institutions that are already part of the Google project.

The scale of the British Museum project is striking. It is the largest space ever captured on the indoor Street View, and there are various addons, such as specially curated virtual exhibitions – Celtic Life in Iron Age Britain, for example – and a Museum of the World microsite linking objects on a timeline.

Michaels said: “We are a big complex entity, bringing us to this is one of the most complex tasks for both of us to do.”

Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute, said one aim was to “bridge the gap between high culture and popular culture”. If it gets fans of internet cat videos interested in cat sculptures in the British Museum they will have done their job, he said.

The project is paid for by the Google Cultural Institute, a non-profit branch of Google.

  • British Museum
  • Google Street View
  • Mapping technologies

More on this story

google cultural institute virtual tours

Neil MacGregor: ‘Britain forgets its past. Germany confronts it’

google cultural institute virtual tours

The Guardian view on Neil MacGregor: he carried on Britain’s national epic

google cultural institute virtual tours

Museum director walks into a bar: meet Neil MacGregor, standup comic

google cultural institute virtual tours

Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor review – Germany’s past is indeed another country

google cultural institute virtual tours

A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor - review

google cultural institute virtual tours

British Museum's new director brings lessons of German history

Comments (…), most viewed.

Google Arts & Culture compiles over 500 virtual tours of museums around the world

  • Mass Timber
  • Trading Notes
  • Outdoor Spaces
  • Reuse + Renewal
  • Architecture
  • Development
  • Preservation
  • Sustainability
  • Transportation
  • International

' aria-label=

Virtually The Same

google cultural institute virtual tours

In an effort to reduce the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus , nearly all of the world’s public institutions have announced that they will close their doors to the public until further notice. Art museums have been hit particularly hard by the sudden news, as it was announced earlier this week that the majority of New York City’s cultural hubs—including the Guggenheim, The Met, MoMA, and The Whitney Museum of American Art—have all abruptly paused operations  despite many of them having new exhibitions that have taken months to prepare. As of now, the situation is no different in nearly every other major city around the world.

Virtual museum exploration , a safe alternative to physical attendance, has therefore taken on new significance in light of the first post-internet pandemic. Google Arts & Culture , the online platform dedicated to providing public access to the collections of some of the world’s most preeminent art museums, developed by Google , has partnered with over 500 global art institutions to open their virtual doors to the public. With the ability to go between the National Folk Museum of Korea in Seoul to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in a matter of seconds, one can ‘travel’ the world to walk through world-famous destinations in a manner never before possible in human history using the same technology developed for the equally impressive Street View feature in Google Maps. While several museums on the website do not yet offer a virtual tour, they provide the next best thing through high-resolution images of their most exemplary artwork.

In some cases, the move to virtual reality has even improved upon the average viewing experience with creative storytelling and behind-the-scenes access. The latest video produced by Google Arts & Culture , for instance, provides a narrated, 360-degree tour of the Chauvet Cave , a natural formation in the south of France filled with humanity’s earliest discovered artworks. By providing an extensively virtual tour of the fragile cave, reserved only for archaeologists and other related professionals, the video ‘digitally preserves what would otherwise be reserved only for textbooks. “Together,” the video description reads, “we bridge 36.000 years of human history by joining state of the art technology and some of the oldest cave paintings left behind by our ancestors.”

As museums and other physical spaces consider strategies for dealing with their newly quarantined audiences, their virtual second lives have the ability to pick up where their physical counterparts left off.

Click Here For The Latest Digital Issue

Johnston Marklee and SWA complete transformative renovation for the Hilbert Museum that draws from its collection

exterior rendering of the broad museum expansion

Diller Scofidio + Renfro unveils expansion for The Broad in downtown Los Angeles

st john’s terminal building is located in hudson square

COOKFOX and Gensler design Google’s new workspace in St. John’s Terminal to be authentically New York

Site Search

Search our website to find what you’re looking for.

Select Your Language

You can select the language displayed on our website. Click the drop-down menu below and make your selection.

Past Forward

Activating the henry ford archive of innovation.

  • Archive Insight
  • Innovation Impact

Facebook

The Henry Ford Launches on Google Cultural Institute

google cultural institute virtual tours

We're very pleased to announce that we are launching a new partnership between The Henry Ford and the Google Cultural Institute, available to anyone with Internet access here . The Google Cultural Institute platform features over 1,000 cultural heritage institutions worldwide, and more than 6 million total artifacts, “putting the world’s cultural treasures at the fingertips of Internet users and … building tools that allow the cultural sector to share more of its diverse heritage online” (in Google’s own words).

The Henry Ford’s new presence on Google Cultural Institute includes:

  • Information and zoomable high-resolution images for 660 artifacts, cross-searchable with all of the other artifacts from other institutions that live within Google Cultural Institute. Our contribution includes some of our most significant artifacts both on and off display, as well as about 200 artifacts (notably the Rosa Parks Bus and the Lincoln Chair ) featured within Google Cultural Institute’s Black History and Culture channel .
  • Two online exhibits, also featured in the Black History and Culture channel. The first is an overview of the African American struggle for freedom from the founding of the US through the Civil Rights era, based on the With Liberty and Justice for All exhibit within Henry Ford Museum.  The second tells the story of Susana Allen Hunter and the resourcefulness she employed to create her improvisational quilts.
  • A virtual visit to the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, using Google Street View. Move around more than 100 distinct points at the Rouge and zoom in to see details of the assembly plant, the artifacts of the legacy gallery, and the amazing views from the observation deck.
  • Street View imagery of the outdoor paths and roads of Greenfield Village. Take your own virtual Model T tour past the many historic structures in the Village.

google cultural institute virtual tours

Over time, we plan to enhance our presence on Google Cultural Institute with the addition of new artifacts and exhibits. We are also very excited that coming soon to Google Cultural Institute are additional virtual tours with Street View, covering more buildings on our campus—including Henry Ford Museum.

google cultural institute virtual tours

The staff of The Henry Ford are always looking for new ways to share our collections with as many people as possible, and we are deeply thankful to our partners at Google for providing us with this opportunity to reach new audiences and share our artifacts in a whole new way. Please visit our presence on Google Cultural Institute and let us know what you think.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

technology , 21st century , 2010s , Greenfield Village , Google Arts & Culture , Ford Rouge Factory Complex , by Ellice Engdahl , African American history

Sign Up For Our eNewsletters

Get the latest news from The Henry Ford. From special offers to our series of popular Enthusiasts eNewsletters, you can tailor the information you’d like us to deliver directly to your inbox.

Facebook Comments

Events & exhibits.

google cultural institute virtual tours

As a nonprofit, we need your support now more than ever. Please consider making a donation today. Your contribution is greatly appreciated.

Special Exhibits at The Henry Ford

  • Detroit '67
  • Bitter/Sweet
  • Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Edsel Ford

Sign Up for Blog Alerts

STEM Technologies

  • Bloxels (Pixel Press)
  • Cubelets (Modular Robotics)
  • Kai’s Clan
  • BirdBrain Technologies
  • Snap Circuits
  • Squishy Circuits
  • Wonder Workshop

3D Printing

  • Full Spectrum Laser
  • Matter and Form

Hands-on Learning

  • Breakout EDU
  • Maplewoodshop

Instructional Software

  • iBlocks Project-Based Learning
  • Tech-tivities
  • STEM Activity Packs

Professional Development

  • Onsite and Virtual Professional Development
  • OTIS for educators
  • Digital Teacher Certifications
  • Effective Instructional Leadership and Supervision
  • Educator Resource Center
  • Teq Essentials

Educational Technology

Smart boards.

  • SMART Board 6000S
  • SMART Board MX
  • SMART Board RX/QX
  • SMART Boards for Business
  • All SMART Products

Active Learning Spaces

  • Active Floor
  • Modular Furniture
  • Audio Enhancement
  • Clear Digital
  • EPIC System
  • FrontRow Audio
  • Lumio by SMART
  • SMART Podium 624
  • Solutions for ​Safe Hybrid Learning
  • The SAFE System
  • Wall Mounts and Mobile Stands
  • Support and Service
  • The Complete Thought
  • Upcoming Events
  • Media Downloads
  • Visit OTISpd.com

Hydroponics

We’re here to help you every step of the way. find exactly what you need to meet the demands of your school or district using our product filters..

All Teq products and services can categorized using the filters below. Use the dropdown menus below to create a customized search for more specific solution.

Virtual Tours and Augmented Reality with Google Arts and Culture

Adam herman pd specialist, news on july 12 2019.

Google Virtual Tours Blog-LG

Through the arts we have a window into the values, perspectives, and capabilities of other people across time and space. Google Arts and Culture allows educators to bring works from around the world into their classrooms to enrich their pedagogy. The Google Arts and Culture website and app also utilize Google Maps and augmented reality in some accessible and meaningful ways. Below is some information on what Google Arts and Culture is, and a breakdown of the Art Projector and Pocket Gallery tools.

Google Arts and Culture: A Virtual Art Gallery

Google Arts and Culture, a part of the Google Cultural Institute, was launched in 2011 with 17 partner museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in London, the State Hermitage Museum, and Uffizi. The collection has since expanded to hundreds of museums and landmarks around the world. Users can search for specific artists, or browse works from time periods, artistic movements, and collections. The website also has several user curated collections that focus on specific topics. The site has also expanded into natural history museums, allowing users to view specific artifacts and take virtual tours.

Museum Views

One of the most engaging aspects of this resource is the Museum Views feature. By going here, users can take walking tours of 3,141 museums and landmarks. Some popular options are Versailles, the White House, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Once inside, users can click through the museum to explore various rooms. There is also an option to learn more about specific works in the tour as the user works their way through the museum. Additionally, some landmarks have background information about the location with primary sources. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. page is particularly well put together. Science teachers could also take students through several natural history museums, some of which include 3D videos with additional animations.

Augmented Reality Options in the App

The Google Arts and Culture app, which can be downloaded onto any smartphone and is compatible with iPads, has all the tools of the website, along with some exciting augmented reality tools. Augmented reality (AR) is when a computer super-imposes an image onto a view of the real world. If you have used Instagram or Snapchat filters to add things like cat ears to selfies, or if you’ve played PokemonGO, then you have already used AR. Good job!

To unlock the AR tools in the Google Arts and Culture app, give the app access to your device’s camera. This will allow you to use a few functions, including the Art Selfie and the Color Palette. These are both fun features that have several uses. This post will be focusing on the second two, which is the Art Projector and Pocket Gallery.

1. Art Projector

Make sure there is some space available when using this feature. First, the user scans a flat surface using their device. After this, several works of art become available that can be dragged out into the space using augmented reality. This gives the viewer a sense of the scale for the work, allowing them to better experience the work as the artist intended. On a personal note, one of my favorite works of art is Guernica by Picasso. I was fortunate enough to see it in person when I was in Madrid. I was floored to discover that the work was the size of a wall (11½ feet by 25½ feet for those who don’t want to look it up)!

PicassoGuernica

As another example, here is an image of The Scream by Edvard Munch. I searched it through the explore feature on Google Docs and picked what I thought was the closest approximation to what it looks like in real life. I imagine this is what most teachers use when using art in a lesson.

google arts and culture_Teq

Now let’s see the same painting dropped into a physical space using the Art Projector. Some differences are immediately apparent. For one thing, the colors and textures are far richer than in the image found online. There is also a much more tactile nature to the work once it is placed in a physical space. Other works that can be accessed through this feature include The Ambassadors , Mona Lisa , and Girl with a Pearl Earring . With this tool, teachers can make their classrooms into an art museum for students to explore!

google arts and culture_Teq

2. Pocket Gallery

The pocket gallery feature shows how much educational potential there is in augmented reality. Once loaded, the user can drop a galley of Vermeer artwork on the ground. Once inside, users can either walk or click through the gallery, zooming in on works to gather information. Teachers could have a lesson outside or send their students on a virtual field trip to learn more about the Baroque Period, the Dutch Golden Age, and augmented reality.

To give an idea of just how immersive this technology is, below are two pictures I took from my iPhone. The one on the left is from my desk and the one on the right is from the VR gallery. What the two have in common is that my camera was pointed in the same direction!

google arts and culture_Teq

I encourage anyone reading this to go to the Google Arts and Culture website to explore, either as an educational tool or for personal enrichment.

To access an additional resource on Google Arts and Culture, and the Google Cultural Institute at large, you can view our Teq Online PD session Using the Google Cultural Institute for a Unique Learning Opportunity .

Resources :

Bresler, Ross. “ Google Arts and Culture Tutorial .”

Harvey, Olivia. “ Here’s everything you can do on the Google Arts and Culture app .”

Nast, Phil. “ Google Arts & Culture .”

One thought on “ Virtual Tours and Augmented Reality with Google Arts and Culture ”

  • Pingback: 3 technologies for Art Museums - The Blue Mirror

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Related Articles & Other Recommended Reading

google cultural institute virtual tours

Using Piper to Introduce CS and Boost Student Confidence Looking to try something new and different in your classroom? Look no further than Piper Inc. to bring both physical building and digital learning to your students! Piper’s inaugural product is a build-it-yourself computer kit that focuses on electrical circuitry and coding.  Piper is the brainchild of Cofounder and Co-CEO, Shree Bose, who won the first ever Google Science Fair in […]

google cultural institute virtual tours

Combining Tech and Learning at NYSCATE 2023 We are so excited to be attending The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE) 2023 annual conference. Taking place from November 18-21, 2023 at the Joseph A. Floreano Riverside Convention Center in Rochester, NY, this premier event is a must-see for all things education technology. Come see what Teq has […]

google cultural institute virtual tours

App Development for Beginners with MAD-learn In the age of technology, it is difficult to maneuver in the ever-changing digital landscape that we face each day. New advancements in areas like coding, programming, app development, and robotics have contributed to the rise of tech, but these concepts can be overwhelming for K-12 students and teachers to fully grasp. Enter MAD-learn, the web-based mobile app […]

National Geographic content straight to your inbox—sign up for our popular newsletters here

google cultural institute virtual tours

Users can browse the permanent galleries of the British Museum the same way they might look for the precise location of a restaurant on Google Street View. 

A New Site Lets You Walk the British Museum From Your Couch

The world’s oldest national public museum is now the world’s largest indoor Google Street View.

In 1774, the British Museum —founded just 21 years earlier as the world’s first national public museum—had a problem, according to its then-director Matthew Maty. Too many of its 10,000 annual visitors were "persons of mean and low degree." Not only did Maty disapprove of "the lower kind of people" at the British Museum, but he complained that they also tended to be rude to the tour guides.

Imagine how horrified Maty would be if he knew that millions of visitors in 2015 can now stroll the storied galleries of his museum clad only in their skivvies, with a sloppy slice of pizza in one hand and a smartphone in the other.

That’s because the British Museum recently unveiled the results of its partnership with the Google Cultural Institute (GCI): the world’s largest Google Street View of an interior space, covering nine floors and 85 permanent galleries of the museum.  

The virtual walk-through enables anyone in the world with an Internet connection to explore the roughly 80,000 artifacts on display (which is just 1% of the total collection of at least eight million objects) just as they’re presented in the museum, from the Lewis Chessmen and cat mummies to famously contested artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles . Visitors start in the yawning expanse of the museum’s Great Court , the largest public square in Europe, with early morning light filtering through the 3,312 glass roof panes. All of the images stitched together into the Street View were captured before and after museum visiting hours, and the galleries of the United Kingdom’s top tourist attraction appear surreally empty.

Fewer than 200 objects that are currently on display at the museum are not included in the Street View; these are primarily works of modern art under copyright elsewhere and ethnographic objects that could not be photographed for cultural reasons, according to Chris Michaels, head of digital media and publishing at the museum.

In addition to the Street View, the British Museum collection at the GCI features virtual exhibits , an experimental " microsite " that maps all of the collections along a single timeline, and high-resolution, zoomable images of more than 4,500 selected objects with descriptions.

The most impressive image is a super-high-resolution ("Gigapixel") image of the Admonitions Scroll , a fifth-to-seventh-century A.D. copy of an earlier work crafted by Gu Kaizhi , considered the father of classical Chinese figure painting. The silk scroll is more than 11 feet (3.4 meters) long and so fragile that it is only displayed to the public for a few weeks every year. Now digitized, it can be examined — as if with a magnifying glass — anytime and anywhere in the world.

A Seven-Acre Tour of 80,000 Objects

Since its inception in 2007, Google Street View has enabled virtual voyeurism of everything from the Grand Canyon to a Scottish car wreck . Google also integrates this technology into their Cultural Institute , (where it is alternatively called "Museum View") capturing spaces as varied as Carnegie Hall and Pompeii . But creating a Street View in a museum requires a particular twist.

"We had to turn off our face-blurring technology," explains Piotr Adamczyk, who headed up the collaboration as program manager for GCI’s content team. Apparently, the Street View algorithm that automatically blurs identities of passersby in public also inadvertently wipes out the visages of sculptures, paintings and masks.

scanning British Museum for Google

The technology that allowed the mapping of the museum is similar to that used to create Street View. 

Other than that, the process was fairly straightforward, with the seven-foot (2.1-meter)-high, two-foot (0.6-meter)-wide camera trolley walked through the galleries over the course of about five days. The GCI has performed complete or partial Street Views of more than 320 other museums and galleries — including India’s Heritage Transport Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — but nothing close to the scale of some 80,000 objects across seven acres (2.8 hectares) of floor space recorded in the British Museum. "The time it took to do the Street View capture is pretty much the amount of time it would take to walk through all of the galleries," notes Adamczyk.

Crowdsourcing and Minecrafting a 262-year-old Museum

The British Museum’s partnership with the GCI isn’t its only initiative in cyberspace. Its public database of more than 3.5 million objects has been continuously updated since 2007. Right now, virtual visitors can download objects from the collection to print on a 3D printer and even assist curators by crowdsourcing information on the museum’s Bronze Age sword collection.

According to Michaels, these cyber initiatives align nicely with the original mission of the 262-year-old museum. "The British Museum was founded on the principle to tell the story of the whole world to the people of the world," says Michaels. "We’re a museum built on sharing."

It’s even a museum that’s currently being built —literally—in the virtual world of Minecraft , one of the world’s best-selling video games.

And much like Matthew Maty took issue with some elements of the British Museum’s public mission in 1774, sharing the museum with the world in 2015 has a few of its own obstacles. "Recreating the ceiling of the Great Court was tricky enough in Street View," explains Michaels. "But it’s really tricky in Minecraft."

Follow Kristin Romey on Twitter

Related Topics

You may also like.

google cultural institute virtual tours

A practical guide to New Zealand's 'Great Walks', from hut bookings to hiking gear

google cultural institute virtual tours

What's new in Japan, from theme parks to museums

Free bonus issue.

google cultural institute virtual tours

America’s Civil War raged outside their windows. A new museum tells their stories.

google cultural institute virtual tours

How to plan a walking tour of Glasgow in the footsteps of Charles Rennie Mackintosh

google cultural institute virtual tours

A UK break in Falmouth: Cornish maritime history on the South West Coast Path

google cultural institute virtual tours

Where to travel in May

google cultural institute virtual tours

How hitchhiking through America spurred a love of desert walking for author Geoff Nicholson

  • History & Culture
  • Environment
  • Paid Content

History & Culture

  • History Magazine
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your US State Privacy Rights
  • Children's Online Privacy Policy
  • Interest-Based Ads
  • About Nielsen Measurement
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Nat Geo Home
  • Attend a Live Event
  • Book a Trip
  • Inspire Your Kids
  • Shop Nat Geo
  • Visit the D.C. Museum
  • Learn About Our Impact
  • Support Our Mission
  • Advertise With Us
  • Customer Service
  • Renew Subscription
  • Manage Your Subscription
  • Work at Nat Geo
  • Sign Up for Our Newsletters
  • Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

  • Skip to global NPS navigation
  • Skip to this park navigation
  • Skip to the main content
  • Skip to this park information section
  • Skip to the footer section

google cultural institute virtual tours

Exiting nps.gov

Alerts in effect, virtual tours and exhibits.

The Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site can be explored in person or online. Our virtual tours and exhibits provide information about Maggie Lena Walker's professional and private life as well as artifacts in our collection and views of the Walker home. If you cannot make it to Richmond for a visit, we hope you will enjoy taking a virtual tour from anywhere in the world! The online resources on this page are also great places to learn more after your in-person tour, to be used in classrooms, and for research projects.

Walker House circa 1922

Google Cultural Institute Virtual Tours and Exhibits

In 2015, the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to create a virtual museum tour and several online exhibits. Our site was one of eight national historic sites selected to participate in this program, making the interior of the Walker house more accessible to virtual visitors.

Explore the Walker home using Google's street view technology on the virtual tour. Additional exhibits highlight the Independent Order of St. Luke headquarters, St. Luke Hall, and how Mrs. Walker served as a role model for African Americans and women.

Check out the Google Cultural Institute's Maggie L. Walker Virtual Museum Exhibit !

National Park Service Museum Management Program Virtual Museum Exhibits

The National Park Service's Museum Management Program has created over thirty online museum exhibits, including one for the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site. The exhibit explores the life and legacy of Maggie Lena Walker through artifacts and a virtual house tour. Learn about Mrs. Walker's life at home, her role as the leader of the Independent Order of St. Luke, her social activism, and her enduring legacy.

Visit the Museum Management Program's Online Museum Exhibit on Maggie L. Walker !

Last updated: October 15, 2016

Park footer

Contact info, mailing address:.

3215 E Broad Street Richmond, VA 23223

(804) 226-5041 x0

Stay Connected

Arts & Culture

Explore the White House with Google Arts & Culture

Oct 27, 2023

[[read-time]] min read

a picture of The White House

It’s National Civics Day, and we’re taking a unique tour inside one of the most famous American structures of all: the White House.

“ Welcome to the White House ” is the first virtual guided tour of the White House’s official tour route complete with accessible audio captions and Spanish translations, so that Americans everywhere can “visit” the People’s House. The tour was captured using Street View that lives on both Google Maps and Google Arts & Culture — and the tour is now open to anyone with an internet connection, not only those who can visit in-person.

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t always called “the White House.” Throughout the 1800s different names were tried — the "President's Palace," the "President's House" or the "Executive Mansion” — but it was Theodore Roosevelt who gave the White House its simple and direct name in 1901, and it stuck.

In this tour, you're invited to explore 11 unique rooms in the White House, from the Blue Room (where the only White House wedding in history took place), to the Library with an American landscape by Georgia O’Keeffe, to the East Room, where Abraham Lincoln first promoted Ulysses S. Grant.

So take the tour, today , and we hope this slice of living history inspires you this National Civics Day to learn more about our country’s history.

A color photograph of the White House’s front view. It is still day time, the sky is slightly gray. The water flows out of the fountain and into a pool of turquoise water. The fountain is surrounded by a garden of yellow tulips. Green bushes surround the front lawn of the White House, and to the side, there are green trees.

“White House Front View” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

A color photograph of the White House’s front view. It is day time and the sky is blue. The water flows out of the fountain in the front, in this image, found on the left. Green bushes surround the front lawn of the White House, and to the side, there are green trees. Across from the bushes are a large garden of red flowers.

“White House Front View'' by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

A street view capture of the Red Room in the White House. The walls are red as are the chairs. The are 5 red charis with brown wooden legs, accompanied by a red couch, 3 brown tables. There are 2 windows , each one adorned by red and gold curtains. There is a chandelier that’s on. The walls are adorned by portraits in gold frames.

“Red Room” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

A street view capture of the movie theater located in the White House. The walls of the room are adorned by red and gold panels. There are several rows of seats, all of which are red. The four in the front row are still different, but distinct from the rest through their quilted red upholstering. Each one has a navy blue covering over the head of the seat.

“Movie Theater” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

A street view capture of the library located in the White House. On the floor is a rug with a burgundy and navy blue pattern. In the middle is a brown table and across are 2 red chairs with brown legs. In the middle of the table, there is a white floral arrangement. Shelves of books adorn the wall, and seating is found all around the room.

“The Library” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

The green room in the white house, the walls are green with paintings on them and a chandelier hangs from the middle of the room. Period piece furniture is throughout.

“Green Room” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

The blue room in the White House. Blue carpet and blue drapes are in a room with paintings on the wall and a chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

“Blue Room” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

a larger stately room two fireplaces and multiple paintings, including Gilbert Stuart's 1797 portrait of President George Washington and John Singer Sargent's 1903 portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt.

“The East Room” by The White House | The White House on Google Arts & Culture

Related stories

Portland

Discover Portland on Google Arts & Culture

New gen ai experiments from google arts & culture artists in residence.

Header (1)

The Tower of London: A virtual journey through time

Banner Image

Experience the Korean Wave and perfect your K-pop dance moves

Monitoring_the_Planet_UNCOP26

Learn about freshwater on World Water Day

cover

World  /  Europe  /  Russia  / Moscow City Center, Kremlin

google cultural institute virtual tours

Moscow City Center, Kremlin

The treasury of our Moscow panoramas is gradually increasing.

We have already been shooting aerial panoramas for 6 years. During this period of time we shot many interesting cities of the world: New York, Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur, Sidney, Miami, Las Vegas, Rio de Janeiro, Dubai, Los Angeles and many others. However, we didn't succeed in shooting Moscow, the city we live in, though we did our best. The case is the flights over Moscow are forbidden except those of Russian Federation Ministry of Civil Defense and Emergency Response and Russian police. Taking in consideration these administrative restrictions we applied our creativity and resolved this problem by the following:

1) We made a virtual tour over Moscow Encircling Highway :  MEH and Interchanges

2) Yauza, Ramenki, Southern Port

3) In May 2010 near the Crocus-City the first in the world 1 gig pixel panorama was shot from the helicopter. It shows the Kremlin, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Novodevichiy Convent, the TV Tower of Ostankino and many other places of interest.

4) This sphere shot from the height of 1000 m which shows most part of Moscow and regions.

5) Last spring we have shot the panorama of Novodevichiy Convent

6) We have done a virtual tour over Moscow State University

7) Earlier this year we have done a fabulous panoramas of Moscow City business center

8) One of Moscow City panoramas has been converted into stereo format

9) We have created a  giga pixel panorama of the center of Moscow

Also it is worth to view one of the photos by Sergey Semenov devoted to the rehearsal of the Victory Parade of May 9. 

It had success on the exhibition  World Seen by the Russians  held in Moscow, on Tverskoy Boulevard in May-June 2011.

And now we would like to introduce a virtual tour around Moscow Kremlin.

Photo by  Sergey Semenov ,  Dmitry Chistoprudov  and  Stas Sedov

18 October 2010

Gagarin's monument

Open Gallery

google cultural institute virtual tours

Virtual Travels in 360°

google cultural institute virtual tours

Bellísimo !!!! Gracias por tener más información de mi entrañable Rusia por ser descendiente allí nació mi abuela y no pierdo las esperanzas de ir es maravilloso !!!!!!!

Marta Markmann, Argentina

What a wonderful picturisation! A feast to the eyes and ears.

AVR Rao, India

Excellent job. God bless Russian people.

Simon Avshalum, USA

Muchachos sois unos verdaderos artistas, exactamente un dia como hoy del año pasado (2012) tuve la fortuna de visitar Moscu y Petrogrado, vivo en Mejico, pero soy Madrileño, un fuerte abrazo

Juan Antonio Garcia, Spain

"its awesome i want to visit there once in my life time"

Mani Shanker, India

Thank you, Mani! I think you'll like Moscow if you'll visit it!

Varvara, AirPano

Je to zázrak čo ste dokázali. Neuveriteľné. Škoda, že naše Slovensko je v porovnaní so svetom zanedbané koministi sa držali pri zemi, nič nedokázali postaviť . Chcela by som ešte navštíviť Ameriku.

Angela Pelachová, Slovakia

Magnifique travail !!!!!! Quel bonheur intense d avoir la possibilité de voir la planète depuis son petit coin de pays.... Merci. Danielle Croset .Suisse.

Danielle Croset, Switzerland

Qué belleza, poder viajar a Moscu... y desde aqui de El Salvador..... Muchas gracias por compartir estos videos....

Cristina Amaya, El Salvador

Good job it's realy wonderfull.....a lot of thank for you....

pratik panchal, India

bellisimo moscu y su escultural plza roja patrimonio de la humanidad felicidades

sergiedv cevadxa, Mexico

your site has good Images but feed showing is low an yway thats good

shema gh, Iran

beautiful city

mohamed eleish, Egypt

Welcome to take photo in Chian!Haha

yi xin, China

Gr8 Work! Just 1 suggestion... Keep doing it!!!!

Mandar Vaidya, India

Many thanks, Mandar! We will!

Precrasnaia Maskva, precrastanaia Rusia. Spasiva !

PASCU IOAN, Romania

★☆☆☆☆

ahmad peko, Iraq

thank, por transportarme en sus maravillosas fotos. puedo decir conozco a moscu sin pasaporte!

jorge humberto gomez, Colombia

it is perfect.

delnia khezraqa, Iran

Sensacional!!!!!!

Paulo Rattes, Brazil

Wonderfull. so beautiful. A lot of tank for you. You are the best¡¡¡¡¡congratulation¡¡¡¡¡

Daniel garcia rusca, Argentina

google cultural institute virtual tours

IMAGES

  1. Explore the Guggenheim Through the Google Cultural Institue

    google cultural institute virtual tours

  2. Google Arts & Culture Offering Virtual Tours of More Than 500 Art

    google cultural institute virtual tours

  3. Google Arts & Culture compiles over 500 virtual tours of museums around

    google cultural institute virtual tours

  4. About Google Cultural Institute

    google cultural institute virtual tours

  5. The Starry Night

    google cultural institute virtual tours

  6. Walk Inside: Google Cultural Institute Puts New York's Guggenheim On

    google cultural institute virtual tours

VIDEO

  1. Quotes Franklin D Roosevelt, Democracy, #election #motivation #inspirationalquotesofthedayeveryday

  2. Virtual World Tour

  3. Google Cultural Institute

  4. The Cultural Construction of Race

  5. Hispanic Heritage Cultural Institute groundbreaking

  6. Explore Excellence: Virtual Campus Tour

COMMENTS

  1. Virtual reality tours

    Virtual reality tours. Step inside world-class museums. Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

  2. World Wonders Project

    Overview. The World Wonders Project brings to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world. Together with partners including UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund and Getty Images, we have brought ...

  3. The new Google Arts & Culture, on exhibit now

    With a virtual reality viewer like Google Cardboard, you can use the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android to take a virtual tour of the street art scene in Rome; step inside a creation by famous street artist, Insa; or even travel 2,500 years back in time and look around the ancient Greek temple of Zeus. You can also subscribe to the new Google Arts & Culture YouTube channel.

  4. About Google Cultural Institute

    Learn more about the digitization tools available to partners of Google Arts & Culture, including Art Camera, Museum View and Tabletop Scanner technologies. ... Virtual tours. Create seamless 360° virtual tours with our specially designed Street View tools and invite global audiences to tour your institution.

  5. British Museum exhibits viewable online thanks to Google partnership

    Google Cultural Institute digitises nearly 5,000 objects to allow virtual tour of museum Mark Brown Arts correspondent Thu 12 Nov 2015 08.20 EST Last modified on Tue 21 Feb 2017 12.43 EST

  6. Google Arts & Culture compiles over 500 virtual tours of museums around

    The latest video produced by Google Arts & Culture, for instance, provides a narrated, 360-degree tour of the Chauvet Cave, a natural formation in the south of France filled with humanity's ...

  7. Google Arts & Culture

    Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world.. It utilizes high-resolution image technology that enables the viewer to tour partner organization collections and galleries and explore the artworks' physical and contextual information.

  8. The Henry Ford Launches on Google Cultural Institute

    Part of the virtual visit you can now make to the Ford Rouge Factory Tour within Google Cultural Institute. We're very pleased to announce that we are launching a new partnership between The Henry Ford and the Google Cultural Institute, available to anyone with Internet access here.The Google Cultural Institute platform features over 1,000 cultural heritage institutions worldwide, and more ...

  9. Google Cultural Institute Virtual Tour

    Google Cultural Institute Virtual Tour. Google. Google Cultural Institute - Produced through a partnership between the National Park Service and Google, this digital platform allows a 360 degree view of the main house, park grounds, museum and visitor center.

  10. Virtual Tours and Augmented Reality with Google Arts and Culture

    Google Arts and Culture: A Virtual Art Gallery. Google Arts and Culture, a part of the Google Cultural Institute, was launched in 2011 with 17 partner museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in London, the State Hermitage Museum, and Uffizi.

  11. Moscow

    On this expedition, we'll walk the streets of Moscow, on the Moskva River in western Russia. This story was created for the Google Expeditions project by ePublishing Partners and AirPano, now available on Google Arts & Culture. With a population of about 12 million people, the city is very much alive today, but its squares and building also ...

  12. A New Site Lets You Walk the British Museum From Your Couch

    December 24, 2015. • 6 min read. In 1774, the British Museum —founded just 21 years earlier as the world's first national public museum—had a problem, according to its then-director ...

  13. Virtual Tours and Exhibits

    The Walker house circa 1922 . NPS. Google Cultural Institute Virtual Tours and Exhibits. In 2015, the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to create a virtual museum tour and several online exhibits. Our site was one of eight national historic sites selected to participate in this program, making the interior of the Walker house more accessible ...

  14. Explore the White House with Google Arts & Culture

    The tour was captured using Street View that lives on both Google Maps and Google Arts & Culture — and the tour is now open to anyone with an internet connection, not only those who can visit in-person.Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't always called "the White House.". Throughout the 1800s different names were tried — the ...

  15. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

    The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Moskva, Russia. Follow. The ceremony for the laying of the Museum's foundation stone took place on August 17, 1898 in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and members of his family. The name of the museum - Alexander III Fine Arts Museum - was officially approved. Building work had commenced a month ...

  16. Moscow culture online / Projects / Moscow City Web Site

    The city has long been improving its online services. Now they're not just an additional convenience — they have become a necessity instead. We have created an online medium. It comprises plenty of events taking place in city's cultural, creative and intellectual life.

  17. Moscow City Center, Kremlin

    1) We made a virtual tour over Moscow Encircling Highway: MEH and Interchanges. 2) Yauza, Ramenki, Southern Port. 3) In May 2010 near the Crocus-City the first in the world 1 gig pixel panorama was shot from the helicopter. It shows the Kremlin, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Novodevichiy Convent, the TV Tower of Ostankino and many other ...

  18. Mastering Virtual College Tours: A Student's Guide to Success

    Virtual college tours are exactly that: immersive online experiences that allow you to get a taste of a college's environment without stepping foot on campus. These tours utilize various technologies, like 360-degree videos, interactive maps, and even virtual reality (VR), to create a realistic and engaging experience.