I’ve just come across a great Matterport experience for visiting the National Gallery in London. Matterport is the same company that does virtual home walkthroughs for real estate. I love that their equipment also works so well for capturing famous places for general tours.
According to the description, you can see over 270 Early Renaissance paintings from the years 1200-1500 in the Sainsbury Wing. All are Christian religious art pieces from churches or private collections. I did some exploring and was very impressed by the collection. In addition to the high-quality images themselves, they also have hot spots for each piece to click for additional information, such as you would see in person. Information includes title, artist, year created, medium, and collection identifiers.
Note that you can visit the museum as a 360 tour on your desktop or as a VR experience. Click the headset in the lower-right corner to launch the VR mode. Either way you move around through every room and get up close to each piece.
The actual capture took place in a single night with no visitors around. It’s pretty unique getting to visit a museum alone (other than the museum guards…). Now it’s like you get to do the same, except truly a solo visit.
There are around 16 rooms to explore with works of art on the walls and in display cases. See works by Raphael, Botticelli, da Vinci, and more. It’s really the next best thing to being there, plus it’s free!
Link: Sainsbury Wing VR Tour
