Can’t make it to Trafalgar Square? The National Gallery has just made it possible to explore its entire collection online, with a new virtual tour created in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.
For the first time, every picture room in the Gallery is accessible through the tour—a significant expansion from the previous version, which has been part of the National Gallery’s website since 2016 but only covered eight rooms.
The new tour captures the acclaimed 2024-25 Bicentenary redisplays of the whole collection, titled “CC Land: The Wonder of Art,” preserving this moment in the Gallery’s history for audiences around the world.
Two Ways to Explore
Visitors can choose between two experiences: a comprehensive tour of all the Gallery’s collection picture rooms (plus the Portico vestibule and the new Sainsbury Wing lobby), or a curated highlights tour covering seven rooms handpicked by the Gallery’s curators.
The highlights tour focuses on specific paintings in each room, with links to gigapixel imagery on Google Arts & Culture and the National Gallery’s collection website. Featured works include Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Sebastiano del Piombo’s The Raising of Lazarus, Johannes Vermeer’s A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, Édouard Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzalès, Sir Thomas Lawrence’s The Red Boy, and Claude Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond.
The seven rooms in the highlights tour are organized by theme:
- Room 2: Power, Patronage and Politics: Painting in Florence and Rome 1500–1600
- Room 15: Artists Inspiring Artists
- Room 16: A New Art for a New Nation: Dutch Painting 1600–1700
- Room 34: A Distinct Style: British Painting 1740–1800
- Room 46: Claude Monet (1840–1926)
- Central Hall: Image and Identity: Full-Length Portraits 1550–1900
- Room 52: Creating Illusion: Netherlandish Painting 1420–1480
A Proven Success
Google Arts & Culture’s first virtual tour of the National Gallery proved hugely popular during the COVID lockdowns, attracting over one million views between November 2020 and January 2021 as visitors found digital ways to connect with their favorite paintings.
“It’s fantastic to have been able to capture this moment in time digitally and to be able to share it with our audiences around the world,” said Lawrence Chiles, Head of Digital Services at the National Gallery. “We know how popular it is to be able to wander the Gallery’s rooms in your own time, whether that is with a painting you know well or if it’s something you are discovering for the first time.”
The collaboration between the National Gallery and Google Arts & Culture dates back to 2011. For the Gallery’s 200th anniversary, the partnership produced a project digitizing 200 paintings in high resolution along with an AI-powered experience called National Gallery Mixtape.
“By bringing the National Gallery’s full Bicentenary redisplay online, we’re moving beyond just digital archiving to offering a truly immersive sense of presence,” said Chance Coughenour, Senior Program Manager at Google Arts & Culture. “Whether you’re exploring the intricate details of a Van Eyck via gigapixel technology or virtually wandering through Room 34, this collaboration ensures that the ‘Wonder of Art’ is available to a global audience long after the physical displays change.”
National Gallery Virtual Tours
Complete Tour: nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtual-tours/google-street-view-virtual-tour
Highlights Tour: nationalgallery.org.uk/stories/virtual-curated-tour
More information: nationalgallery.org.uk
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