I’ve been sitting at home here in South India trying to avoid getting COVID but still wanting to travel and explore more of this beautiful country… so I’ve been checking out the virtual museum tours. The best I’ve found are:
- National Museum in New Delhi
- The Museum Mumbai
- Salar Jung Museum
- National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi
- National Gallery of Modern Art in Bengaluru
- National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai
- Victoria Memorial Hall
- Indian Museum in Kolkata
- ASI Museum Vaishali
- Anglo Sikh Virtual Museum
- Space Technology Gallery in Bengaluru
- Virtual Images Museum and Sound
Now, of course, a virtual museum tour isn’t the same as actually walking through the museums, getting close to your favorite paintings, or checking out all the angles on the artifact that catch your eye, but it’s not too bad either. You can sit in your favorite chair, sip on your favorite beverage, and travel through the centuries of Indian cultural history.
The problem with these virtual tours though is that sometimes the quality isn’t great. The website might be outdated, the navigation feature is clunky or the photos have a weird resolution.
In fact, I struggled to enjoy myself at first, but after figuring out the best parts of each museum then I had a great time and figured others would love a chance to see the best of these museums while avoiding some of the frustration.
In this post I’ll point you to the museums and exhibitions that are worth your time!
First though, there are a few ways to explore the museums:
- Virtual Tours: Most sites use Google Steet View or a Flash Player. These are great because it’s like walking through the exhibit. However, they can be frustrating because you can’t see the exhibitions up-close. Some of the navigation features are buggy as well.
- Virtual Galleries: This is a slideshow of images of the exhibitions. These can be good because you can see the objects up-close and there is often text describing the object, basically the online version of a plaque.
- Videos: Some websites have videos of exhibitions or staff giving a presentation. These can be good because they tell a full picture of an exhibit. But these can be a bit restricting though because you won’t have that feeling of drifting around the museum to what interests you.
NOTE: You may need to download the latest Flash player for some of the virtual tours.
1) National Museum in New Delhi
This gem is one of the largest museums in India with a collection of 200,000 works that cover 5,000 years. You can find plenty of artifacts of Indian and foreign origin.
You can find virtual tours powered by Google Street View which lets you go through the rooms giving you that “strolling through a museum feel.” The War Room is my favorite with its elephant coated in armor and the other displays of weapons.
Yet after strolling the rooms, I prefer the virtual galleries to look up-close at my favorite collections.
Pre-historic Archaeology Collection – The Indus Valley Civilization is fascinating to me because it was an advanced civilization that had entered the Bronze Age… while the rest of the world was hunter-gatherers. Historians have also found no evidence of warfare despite the large population.
This virtual gallery lets you admire the details of artifacts while learning about the backstory from the accompanying text. The Dancing Girl is worth checking out and is “one of the rarest artifacts in the world.”
Paintings – There are 17,000 paintings in the museum and this has one of the largest collections of Indian miniature paintings in the country. The earliest of these paintings come from the 9th century and were done on palm leaves.
You can find a wide assortment of other collections, such as Archaeology, Anthropology, Arms and Armour, Decorative Arts, Manuscript, Numismatics and Epigraphy, Jewellery, Central Asian Antiquities, and Pre-Columbian and Western Art.
One of the most impressive pieces at the museum is the wooden temple chariot honoring Lord Vishnu, yet the virtual gallery doesn’t quite capture it. For a better view, check out the documentary above at 4:12.
Hours: Tue-Fri (10:00 AM to 6:00 PM),
Sat & Sun (10:00 AM to 8:00 PM)
(Closed on Mondays and National Holidays)
Ticket Price: Adults- Rs. 20
Foreign Nationals- Rs. 650 (including Audio Guide).
2) Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai
The Museum Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Mumbai was once called the Prince of Wales Museum and is in a jaw-dropping building that was founded at the turn of the 20th century.
The virtual galleries are some of my favorites out of all the museums. They have a more modern design and feel like you are flipping through a big photo book.
As I’m researching this post, I’m seeing exhibitions about the 15 Variations on the Sari, Animals in Indian Art, and the Fauna of the Indian Subcontinent.
You can check out the virtual galleries here.
3) Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad
If you’re interested in art, antiques, rare manuscripts, and a whole lot more, this is the third-largest museum in all of India. Oddly, it comes from one man’s collection… Salar Jung, who came from a noble family, which ruled the state of Hyderabad for more than 200 years.
This museum is most famous for its art collection though.
To explore the many virtual tours, you will need to “download the latest Flash Player,” which isn’t complicated but the technology does limit the experience here. The audio is helpful and interesting though… just don’t mess with it too much and you’ll be fine because it has a lot of good info.
Check out the Founder’s Gallery tour to learn more about who the heck Salar Jung is or walkthrough on the Street View virtual tour to see the space with easier navigation.
The Veiled Rebecca is the most interesting tour though. It will remind you of some of Michaelangelo’s work as the entire room is surrounded by white marble sculptures.
The option to look closely at each sculpture is a helpful feature.
Hours: 10am – 5pm
4, 5, & 6) National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, Bengaluru, & Mumbai.
The most important collection of modern art in India is found at this museum, which has 3 branches in New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.
The main branch is in New Delhi at the Jaipur House.
If you like cutting-edge art like I do, you’ll find plenty to tantalize your eyes, yet there are also collections covering the old Indian master painters.
The galleries are called a “virtual tour” but is what I’m calling a virtual gallery because it is a slideshow of the paintings, and you cannot explore the museums.
You can explore a few different ways:
- Arts & Culture Tour: This is provided by Google and is the easiest to navigate. It is a slideshow of paintings broken up by the type of art or artist. Each painting also has its own description too. You can check it out here.
- Virtual Tour: I’d call this a virtual gallery because it is a slideshow of the collections. You can see the Permanent Display and current exhibitions. Check them out here.
- Virtual Galleries: These are also slideshows but you can explore specific categories of art such as Miniature Paintings or specific artists such as Rabindranath Tagore. Check them out here.
Hours: Tuesday to Friday 11:00 AM to 6:30 PM
Saturday and Sunday 11:00 AM – 8:00 PM
Closed on Mondays and National Holidays
Ticket Price: Indians 20 Rs, Foreign Nationals 500 Rs.
7) Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata
The museum itself is gorgeous with stately British architecture that was built in honor of Queen Victoria. For architecture lovers, the virtual tour of the hall is the most beautiful you will see with easy navigation and clear photography with HDR-rendered colors.
This museum also has one of the best virtual tours, as you can easily explore the museum with a Google Street View navigation. You can check out the current exhibitions here.
Then you can head to the Virtual Exhibitions or virtual gallery to look closer at the works. With easy-to-use navigation and descriptions about the works. You can check out the current exhibitions here.
You can find collections of Indian paintings, Western paintings, rare photographs, manuscripts and more.
Hours: 10am – 6pm. All days except Mondays and National Holidays.
8) Indian Museum in Kolkata
The Indian Museum in Kolkata is not only the oldest museum in India, but it’s also the largest museum out of all the countries in the Western Pacific region.
There is so much here! It has a wide array of collections with skeletons, fossils, armor, antiques, Mughal paintings, textiles, sculptures, and even mummies.
You take a Virtual Tour using Arts & Culture. Or look closer at the Virtual Gallery by checking out the slideshows to further explore with ease here.
Hours: Tue-Fri 10AM-6:30PM; Sat-Sun 10AM-8PM
9) Anglo Sikh Virtual Museum
This museum is one of the coolest and most tech-friendly sites if you want to take the old swords and artifacts and almost play with them in your hands.
It’s interesting because this isn’t a tour of a real museum though because this is exclusively an online museum.
The goal of the project is to make 3D renderings of the works and it is coming along very well. You can look at swords, guns, gold domes, coins, and jewelry from all sides… turn them over… look at the bottom… or the top.
The main attraction is the Relics page. There is NOT a ton to see yet but it’s worth watching this site as they add more pieces to the online collection.
The eLearning resource is robust as well and will currently offer 3 videos with topics such as:
- 3D Printing
- Virtual Museum Tour
- Intro to VR
10) Space Technology Gallery in Bengaluru
The first thing you’ll see as you “enter” this virtual museum is the Rakesh Sharma the first Indian in Space AND all the colors!
The technology has a beautiful responsive site and you can tell it’s a museum for kids (even if they are over 18), because the colors are vivid and there’s plenty to look at.
You can take the virtual tour and it has its own functionality that makes it easy to navigate around. You can zoom in or out. You can click for more information as you walk. There are photo icons to give you a closer look and a nice voice comes on to explain the exhibit in more detail.
The museum is huge too with 700 square meters, so you will have plenty to see and is worth checking out to get a sense for India’s contribution to the space age.
11) Virtual Museum of Images and Sound
Quick fun fact about me: I love making videos so if you’re enjoying the blog AND not following along on Youtube, you should join us over there too.
That’s why this museum looks so cool to me!
Virtual Museum of Images and Sound is a collection of online archives from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Center for Art and Archaeology (CAA), and the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology.
The museum is supported financially by the Government of India’s Ministry of Culture.
There’s a lot of visual stuff to see because the CAA alone surveys 350 museum collections in India! So you can see galleries of the American Council for Southern Asian Art, Allahabad Museum in Utter Pradesh, the Alwar Museum in Rajasthan, and much more. Check out more here.
For music, the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology will take you back through the history of music in India with exhibits like:
- Raga in Context (Hindustani classical music)
- Ritual traditions in music-making
- Life cycle events about oral and folk epic songs
- Work songs which are sung in the villages
- Devotional music
- Oral Narratives and Epics
You can check out more here.
12) ASI Museum Vaishali
To get a look at the historic archaeological surveys of India, this site is your best bet. But I will warn you the website is clunky and looks like it was built 20 years ago. I’m only including it because it is worth navigating to get a sense of this site.
You can check out the Exhibits which do have a great description of the ancient site of Vaishali. You can also check out the documentary for visuals but it is not in English unfortunately. You can check out the Exhibits here.
Also, the Slideshow and Gallery options either aren’t working or you can only see a few pieces at poor resolution.
You’ll have better luck with the Pedestals as they will give you a closer look at the site. You can check them out here.
Final Words:
If you’re wanting to explore India’s culture and history from the comfort of your home, there are plenty of virtual museums across India and the functionality is pretty good… and getting better as Google’s Arts and Culture project makes exploring the museums easier.
If you’re interested in art, I recommend the Museum of Modern Art.
For Indian history, the National Museum in New Delhi and the Indian Museum in Kolkata were my favorites.
But there are so many more options where you can look at artifacts, manuscripts, and even the tradition of music.
For more virtual tours, I found the 9 best 360-degree virtual tours of Mumbai which will take you through the hotspots of this sprawling city.
Related Articles:
