In times of the coronavirus pandemic, we suggest a visit to 10 museums around the world - at present most closed to the public - without ever leaving your home, in order to make this confinement more bearable.
Brera Art Gallery (Milan)
Located at the Art Academy in Brera, in the capital of Lombardy, it holds one of the best Italian painting collections, with works by Caravaggio, Piero della Francesca or Rafael. You may access it directly from here.
Supper at Emaus, Caravaggio
Galleria degli Uffizi (Florència)
The great Florentine Museum holds some of the most renowned works of art from the Italian Renaissance, such as The Birth of Venus by Sandro Boticelli, Annunciation by Leonardo Da Vinci or the Venus of Urbino by Titian. You can start your visit here.
The birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli.
Vatican Museums (Rome)
The Catholic Church's enormous collection is held in several museums at the tiny Vatican City State, where one can find treasures such as the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, Rafael's frescoes –The School of Athens or The Parnassus–, the Vatican Library or the great archeological collection, among which the Greek set Laocoön and his sons stands out. You can take a look here.
Laocoön and his sons
National Archeological Museum (Athens)
This museum has the best Ancient Greek archeological collection in the world, with renowned works of art such as the Artemision Bronze (often called The God from the Sea) or the Mask of Agamemnon. You can start your visit from this link.
Bronze statue of Zeus or Poseidon, known as Artemision Bronze or The God from the Sea
Prado Museum (Madrid)
With 300 years of history, the Prado Museum holds the Spanish Royal Collection, with prominent Spanish, Italian and Flemish works of art. Among them, great paintings by Diego Velázquez, such as The surrender of Breda (also known as The lances), Vulcan's Forge, or Las Meninas, the collection of Francisco de Goya's, with highlights being La maja Vestida and La Maja Desnuda (The Clothed Maja and The Nude Maja respectively), and the Garden of The Earthly Delights by Bosch. You can visit it here.
Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez.
Louvre Museum (Paris)
The great French gallery is one of the most visited museums, since it hosts some of the world's most iconic artworks, such as The Gioconda (also known as The Mona Lisa) by Leonardo Da Vinci, The raft of Medusa by Géricault or Liberty Guiding the People by Delacroix. Among the archeological collections, the highlights are the two Greek figures, the Venus of Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (also called the Nike of Samothrace). You can lose yourself among them through this link.
The Gioconda, also known as The Mona Lisa, de Leonardo da Vinci.
British Museum (London)
The great collections of Britain's most important museum include some of the most renowned pieces of Antiquity, such as The Parthenon Marbles (also known as The Elgin Marbles), The Rosetta Stone –which Champollion used to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs- or the Benin Bronzes. You can access it via this link.
Parthenon Frieze. British Museum.
Metropolitan Museum (New York)
With more than two million works of art from around the world, the MET collection encompasses works from Antiquity to the 20th Century, with many antiquities and works by Rafael, Titian, Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édgar Degas, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh or Pablo Picasso. You can you start your visit here.
Self-portrait with straw hat, by Vincent Van Gogh.
Hermitage (Saint Petersburg)
The old Tsar's Winter Palace holds the enourmous Russian artistic collection, with highlights from many of the greatest artists of all time, such as Leonardo, Titian, Van Gogh or Paul Gaugin. You can discover it here.
Parau, Parau, by Paul Gaugin
National Gallery of Art (Washington)
Washington DC is home to several museums, and the National Gallery of Art hosts some of the most revered paintings in the world, and authors such as Vermeer, Raphael, Velázquez, Tolouse Latrec or Amadeo Modigliani. Acces it via this link.
Woman Holding a Balance, by Vermeer.
... and the MNAC (Barcelona)
The Catalan National Art Museum (MNAC) hosts one of the most important Romanesque and Gothic art collections in the world, with works such as Sant Climent de Taüll's Pantocrator. It also has some of the best Catalan works of art from the 19th and 20th centuries. While it's closed you can click the link to visit it
Sant Climent de Taüll's Pantocrator