Museums are rarely able to exhibit more than a fraction of the material they own, and even then the best stuff is too often sealed off behind glass or mobbed by school parties. There are no such problems on museum websites, where space is unlimited and objects, scanned in high definition, can be browsed in close-up. Here is the pick of the world’s collections.
1 louvre.fr
Frequently named the greatest museum in the world, this cornerstone of French culture has a website to match. Its size is staggering, but it is straightforward to navigate and its “virtual visit”, in which you click your way though the museum’s exquisitely adorned corridors, is not to be missed.
2 hermitagemuseum.org
Russia’s state museum in St Petersburg houses 3m artefacts from all over the world. Its website may not have had as many euros thrown at it as the Louvre’s, but it is comprehensive and crammed with engaging multimedia features.
3 www.vam.ac.uk
The website of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is one of Britain’s finest, overflowing with film and audio clips plus page after page of information about the treasures in its collections. Not to mention the opportunity to design a Kylie Minogue doll.
4 rijksmuseum.nl
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam houses an impressive collection of paintings by artists such as Vermeer and Rembrandt. On its English-language website 1,000 of them can be viewed in glorious close-up, right down to individual brush strokes.
5 Museum of the History of Science
The site of this Oxford-based museum at www.mhs.ox.ac.uk houses an interesting collection of microsites covering all manner of subjects from maths to microscopes.
6 www.culture24.org.uk
An online-only museum, with no building and no collection of its own. Instead, it cleverly brings together the best of the world’s museums together under one virtual roof.
7 The Smithsonian
The venerable American institution’s collection of 19 museums houses a staggering 136m items. Si.edu is the gateway to a great many of them, including the pick of the impressive National Air and Space Museum.
8 nationalarchives.gov.uk
In the official archives of the British government you will find scanned-in letters from Jack the Ripper, documents about the Black Death and Guy Fawkes and pages from the Domesday Book.
9 museumstuff.com
A specialist search engine for the thousands of museums in the world — and one of the few sites that out-Googles Google.
10 sciencemuseum.org.uk
Everything you could want from a museum website, this hugely interactive resource is as much fun to browse as its bricks-and-mortar counterpart in South Kensington, west London. It’s particularly well suited to younger visitor// presented by sourav//
1 louvre.fr
Frequently named the greatest museum in the world, this cornerstone of French culture has a website to match. Its size is staggering, but it is straightforward to navigate and its “virtual visit”, in which you click your way though the museum’s exquisitely adorned corridors, is not to be missed.
2 hermitagemuseum.org
Russia’s state museum in St Petersburg houses 3m artefacts from all over the world. Its website may not have had as many euros thrown at it as the Louvre’s, but it is comprehensive and crammed with engaging multimedia features.
3 www.vam.ac.uk
The website of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is one of Britain’s finest, overflowing with film and audio clips plus page after page of information about the treasures in its collections. Not to mention the opportunity to design a Kylie Minogue doll.
4 rijksmuseum.nl
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam houses an impressive collection of paintings by artists such as Vermeer and Rembrandt. On its English-language website 1,000 of them can be viewed in glorious close-up, right down to individual brush strokes.
5 Museum of the History of Science
The site of this Oxford-based museum at www.mhs.ox.ac.uk houses an interesting collection of microsites covering all manner of subjects from maths to microscopes.
6 www.culture24.org.uk
An online-only museum, with no building and no collection of its own. Instead, it cleverly brings together the best of the world’s museums together under one virtual roof.
7 The Smithsonian
The venerable American institution’s collection of 19 museums houses a staggering 136m items. Si.edu is the gateway to a great many of them, including the pick of the impressive National Air and Space Museum.
8 nationalarchives.gov.uk
In the official archives of the British government you will find scanned-in letters from Jack the Ripper, documents about the Black Death and Guy Fawkes and pages from the Domesday Book.
9 museumstuff.com
A specialist search engine for the thousands of museums in the world — and one of the few sites that out-Googles Google.
10 sciencemuseum.org.uk
Everything you could want from a museum website, this hugely interactive resource is as much fun to browse as its bricks-and-mortar counterpart in South Kensington, west London. It’s particularly well suited to younger visitor// presented by sourav//
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very important information.
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