The need for social distancing may have forced museums and historic sites around the world to close for the moment, but many have made their spaces, exhibitions and collections available to anyone with a digital device and a decent internet connection. Some offer 360-degree tours, like the one that takes you to every nook and cranny of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate. Others present virtual exhibitions or searchable online archives, like the dozens on the Google Arts & Culture site, where partner museums share treasures like the Rosetta Stone and ancient Egyptian artifacts (The British Museum, London) … emblematic photos of the 20th century (the LIFE Magazine Archives) … or treasures from the history of sport (Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland). Here are 10 remarkable virtual historic sites worth exploring:
Xi’an warriors
It was one of the most amazing archaeological finds of the 20th century. In 1974, farmers digging a well fell on a life-size clay figure which, according to government archaeologists, belonged to a large army of terracotta soldiers created to protect the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the ‘beyond. The massive mausoleum, created around 210 BC, is home to some 8,000 warriors, as well as hundreds of chariots and horses, all laid out in battle. In 2017, a Chinese company, inspired by Google Street View, created an impressive virtual experience that allows visitors to dive into the grave and “walk” among the soldiers, looking at their unique facial expressions and traces of their colorful painting. original at the end. range. You don’t have to read Chinese to appreciate the enormity of it all.
Click on HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: 5 Things You Might Not Know About the Terracotta Army
Smithsonian Museum of American History
James Montgomery Flagg’s poster ‘I Want You For The American Army’, 1917, the most iconic image produced in support of the First World War recruiting effort.
James Montgomery Flagg / Imperial War Museums / Getty Images
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is presented as the largest single collection of American history in the world, housing more than 1.8 million objects, each of which fundamentally defines the American experience. The museum offers around 100 online exhibits from its encyclopedic collections, each with a mix of photos, videos, graphics and texts on subjects ranging from the life of Abe Lincoln (yes, they have the stove pipe cap ) to the development of the first artificial heart to the evolution of voting machines and even a range of vintage lunch boxes.
Click HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: 9 of the most collectable school lunch boxes, from 1935 to the present
Aviation museum
The first presidential aircraft to use jet technology, this specially built Boeing 707-120 was known as SAM (Special Air Missions) 970. It was delivered in 1959.
Matt Sullivan / Getty Images
War planes. Spies. Spatialship. Gliders. Planes in kit. Eccentric devices. This sprawling museum, adjacent to the Boeing complex south of Seattle, Washington, is considered one of the largest and best air and space museums in the world, with more than 150 aircraft, more than 25,000 aviation-related artifacts and a wide range of exhibits that collectively chronicle the human quest to take flight. Flight geeks could easily get lost in its large searchable and searchable database of these collections while 360-degree tours allow you to enter a dozen iconic aircraft, including the Boeing 747, Concorde and model large-scale museum of the space shuttle orbiter used. for training astronauts.
Click on HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: Who was the first president to fly on Air Force One?
National Museum of Women’s History
Come for the deep well of classroom biographies and digital resources, stay for the wide range of virtual exhibits, many of which are powered by Google Arts & Culture. For the past two decades, the National Women’s History Museum has been the largest online cultural institution telling stories of women who helped transform the American Heavy with slideshows and graphics; virtual exhibits document women making waves in politics, sport, civil rights, science technology and more. Discover her collection of oral histories from the American Rosie movement, relaying women’s contributions to the country’s defense production.
Click HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: Milestones in women’s history: a timeline
Anne Frank House
Anne Frank’s diary, which recounts her life in hiding during the Second World War, remains one of the most powerful accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust. If a trip to Amsterdam to visit Anne Frank’s house isn’t in the cards, AnneFrank.org offers the next best thing. In addition to tons of informative content about the teenage girl, her diary and the war, there are bells and whistles galore: an interactive timeline, videos about her life, a 360 degree tour of the house, a tour in virtual reality from the secret annex where she and her family hid for 761 days, and an additional exhibition on Google Arts & Culture.
Click on HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: How Anne Frank’s Diary Became an International Sensation
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Franklin D. Roosevelt loved being seen in public sitting in his car because he was hiding his legs ravaged by polio while projecting an image of power and forward motion.
Bettmann Archives / Getty Images
The FDR, the only American president with four terms, presided over the country in two of its most trying ordeals: the Great Depression and the Second World War. This online experience guides users room by room through the exhibits at its expansive presidential library and museum in Hyde Park, New York, bringing together a multitude of original documents, artifacts, videos, 360-degree tours and more . Together, they illustrate everything from the little-known FDR assassination attempt to its New Deal policies and decisions in wartime, to the important role of Eleanor. It is easy to lose track of time by browsing through all the fascinating letters, from a voter urging him to “stop being a smiling, useless and fickle prima donna politician” to that of Albert Einstein forcefully detailing his objections to the atomic bomb.
Click HERE for the experience.
LEARN MORE: How FDR became the first and only president to serve four terms
NASA
Inside the Icing Research Tunnel at NASA’s John Glenn Research Center. It is one of many NASA facilities to discover on a virtual tour.
NASA
Calling all space geeks: head over to NASA for ultimate fun in the last frontier. Get the full scoop on all key NASA programs past and present, from the Hubble telescope to the Mars Rover and the next Parker solar probe. Discover the Historical hub to dive deep into photos, videos and articles on all their historical missions. Enjoy a maternal mode of spatial images with the cache of ultra-high definition videos taken from various missions, such as the virtual visit of the moon in 4K, activated by the spacecraft Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. For aspiring astronauts, virtual tours abound in various NASA research and training facilities – putting users inside a supersonic wind tunnel, a zero gravity laboratory, flight simulators, a complex of space environments and much more.
Click on HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: The Space Race
American Battlefield Trust Battlefield Virtual Tours
The Pennsylvania State Monument is the largest memorial on the Gettysburg battlefield, commemorating the tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who fought there.
Marjie Lambert / Miami Herald / Tribune News Service / Getty Images
Most site visits to the battlefield require a leap of imagination: the ability to wander through a perfectly peaceful open field and superimpose a mental film of smoke and combat and fallen warriors, while taking into account military strategy and broader political issues. ABT’s website may not offer the sun on your back, but it combines the setting, the action and the context in a much more transparent way, with its 360-degree virtual tours of more than 20 fields of battle of the American Revolution and the Civil War. In the one visit to Gettysburg, there are 15 different stops – no steps required – each of which has clickable icons with granular details on all whos, whats and whys. And when you’re done touring, be sure to explore the site’s other robust resources, from battle summaries to generals’ biographies.
Click HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: 6 ingenious acts of disappointment on the battlefield
National Museum of African American History and Culture
A memorial to the salvation of black power by American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos at 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Although there are many current and past exhibits to explore online here, the real appeal is the collections. In the Collections Stories area of the site, museum staff members share objects that historically or culturally resonate with them, be it Muhammad Ali’s training equipment … the dress that Carlotta Walls, one of the – saying Little Rock Nine, wore angry crowds when she walked with the gauntlet on her first day of integration at Little Rock Central High School … or shards of stained glass from the bombing of Baptist Church on 16th Street in Birmingham, Alabama, who killed four little girls. And if you have a lot of time to explore, browse the museum’s extensive open source collections, teeming with letters, documents, photos, and artifacts. They pass on vast African-American experience – from the slave ship manifesto to the poster for Sidney Poitier’s film To sir, with love.
Click on HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: The last survivor of the slave ship gave an interview in 1930. He has just surfaced
American Holocaust Memorial Museum
A photo of Americans protesting against German assaults during World War II.
FPG / Hulton Archives / Getty Images
The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., presents powerful online exhibits teeming with resources such as videos, timelines, glossaries, and image galleries rich in powerful original artifacts. Themes include collaboration and aiding and abetting, Nazi propaganda, the Americans and the Holocaust, racial health policies, and more. Elsewhere on the museum site: in-depth archives of interviews with survivors, moving objects such as a gallery of 600 identity cards of Holocaust victims and a place to browse the museum’s immense collections that give food for thought .
Click HERE for the experience.
READ MORE: US Response to the Holocaust
