May 5 Is A Great Day For History Lovers To Celebrate Because It’s Museum Lover’s Day! Many Great Places Around The World Offer Virtual Touring, Including World Renowned Museums Where You Can Experience Culture And History. Click The Links Below To Begin Your Virtual Tour.


Visit your own local museum and then go global! What a great way to help kids learn about history.

The three oldest museums

In 1471, Pope Sixtus IV (an interesting name) donated a set of prehistoric bronzes to Rome and placed them in the Plazza Del Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill. Later came more inscriptions, statues, art, coin collections, and jewels for display and the museum was born! The Capitoline Museums opened their door to the public in 1734. This is where you can see the famous Capitoline Wolf and the bronze Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius.

The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia became a museum in 1764 but only opened its doors to the public in 1852. It is the second largest museum in the world with over three million collections of artifacts and arts of different cultures. Here you’ll find: the 2nd century BCE Greek statue of Aphrodite; Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna Litta; Raphael’s Conestabile Madonna; and more from art giants like Michaelangelo, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and more.

The Louvre in Paris, France trumps them all in terms of gallery floor space. The building started as a fortress in 1190, then became a Royal castle in the 16th century. It finally was turned into a museum in 1793, with more than 500 paintings and decorative arts that were confiscated from the royal family and French nobility during the Reign of Terror!

Here are more virtual tours for museums around the world, each with a rich history within its walls.

Click the links to visit them today!

The Albertina Museum

Once a Hapsburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, the Albertina was turned into a museum in 1805. Here you can view works of art like “Study for the Last Supper” by Da Vinci and “The Water Lily Pond” by Monet.

Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam, Netherlands, the Rijksmuseum first opened in The Hague in 1798 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808. Today you can get virtually up close and personal with great Dutch masters like Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer.

National Palace Museum

Whisk away to Taipei, Taiwan where you can get a 360 degree virtual tour of over 700,000 pieces of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks that dates back 8,000 years.

National Museum, New Delhi

From New Delhi, India, the collection includes over 200,000 local and foreign art and artifacts that span over 5,000 years from prehistoric to modern times.

Sistine Chapel

Here is the most recognizable chapel in the world, located at the Vatican Museums (Vatican City). You can view Michelangelo’s masterpieces which he painted between 1508 and 1512, including 9 scenes from the Book of Genesis like “The Creation of Adam.”

Tokyo National Museum

Opened in 1872, it’s the oldest and largest art museum in Tokyo with a wonderful collection of art and artifacts from Japan and other Asian countries.

Uffizi Gallery

The Medici family was one of the largest patrons of art in Renaissance Italy. The museum in Florence, Italy was designed in 1581 by Giorgio Vasari for Cosimo I de’ Medici. Today you can visit it online and view Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” and other Italian greats.

Victoria and Albert Museum

View select online exhibits from anywhere. Opened in London, England in 1852, the V&A houses a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects, books, and archives that span over 5,000 years.

Museu de Arte de São Paulo Among the pre-twentieth century Brazilian art on display in São Paulo, Brazil, you can also find collections from Rafael, Titian, Delacroix, Cézanne, and more.

Museo Nacional del Prado (Madrid, Spain) Opened in 1819, you can find well known European art like “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez, “The Third of May 1808” by Francisco De Goya, and “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The “Met” is the largest museum in the United States, located in New York City, New York. It opened it’s doors in 1870 and today houses a permanent collection of over 2 million works from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all of the European masters.

Sources:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-oldest-museums.html

https://www.museicapitolini.org/en/il_museo/storia_del_museo

https://hoteljules.com/the-louvre-facts/

https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/best-virtual-museum-tours/

Recommended reading for kids

The entire history of the greatest works in painting, sculpture, and photography are included on this comprehensive and colourful tour through time.

Get The Arts: a visual encyclopedia Book

Filled with representations of paintings from many world-class galleries, this charming book is the perfect prelude to a child’s first visit to an art museum.

Get Anna at the Art Museum

When Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully. She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation. And she would go in comfort-she would live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Get From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler