Google Arts & Culture
The Natural History Museum’s Masterpieces Online
Through the partnership between Google Arts & Culture and some of the world’s leading cultural institutions, it is now possible to explore masterpieces from museum collections online in ultra-high resolution, as well as to visit museums from home through Street View tours of their galleries.
Thanks to cutting-edge technology, visitors can come face to face with Jurassic giants, explore reconstructions of the habitats of now-extinct animals to understand how they lived, discover fascinating stories about the evolution of our planet over millions of years, and much more.
In Italy, the Giancarlo Ligabue Natural History Museum of Venice has joined this major international project in the Natural History Museums section, further strengthening the long-standing collaboration between Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Google Cultural Institute. The Museum makes available more than 150 high-resolution images from its rich scientific collections, which document the history of the Museum itself and the research carried out by naturalists both locally and in distant regions.
In addition, with the help of Street View, users can take a virtual walk through the exhibition galleries of the Fontego dei Turchi, the magnificent early medieval palace on the Grand Canal that is now home to the Museum, and immerse themselves in its evocative and engaging displays, characterised by a modern and original exhibition design.
Visitors can also explore “The Museum of Emotions”, an interactive story that combines images and texts to guide users through the Museum and reveal the richness of its collections, as well as the work of its staff in research, public engagement and conservation, essential activities for safeguarding the environmental heritage of the Venice Lagoon.
The journey takes visitors through the Museum’s different sections, from the spectacular Cetacean Gallery, where the skeletons of a large fin whale and a young sperm whale are suspended from the ceiling, to galleries tracing the stories and collections of Venetian figures such as Giovanni Miani and Giuseppe Reali. The tour also reveals some of the Museum’s most unusual treasures, including two mummified specimens of mythical creatures: the basilisk and the chimera. They are displayed in spaces inspired by the Wunderkammer, the 16th-century “cabinets of curiosities” in which collections of natural wonders and curiosities were exhibited.
Explore the Civic Museums of Venice on Google Arts & Culture: