virtual travel
World's Top 10
Attractions...
From Your Sofa
COLIN SIMPSON
Self-Isolating? Missing Travel? Then Check Out Our Guide to Visiting the World's Most Popular Attractions in the Comfort of Your Home
IF YOU love to travel then you don’t lose the urge to visit new places and experience different cultures even when, as now, that’s impossible. Countries remain in lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, few planes are taking off, and most tourist attractions are shut. Fortunately for the millions of frustrated travellers who are staying at home, there are many online ways to explore the world, and virtual travel can be a great way to take your mind off the news for a while.
It takes several forms, such as 3D virtual reality tours, live webcams, videos, and museum sites that let you gaze at great works of art. Here we’re looking at virtual ways to enjoy the world’s 10 most popular tourist attractions, based on TripAdvisor booking data. “These are some of the most historic and memorable sites in the world,” said spokesperson Laurel Greatrix. So enjoy – and stay safe.
Top picture: Rome’s Colosseum, named the world’s most popular draw for the second year running.
1) Colosseum, Rome, Italy
WHEN in Rome, it’s hard to miss this gigantic former gladiator arena, and it’s easy to keep an eye on it from your front room, too. Live webcams operated by Skyline are trained on the massive structure 24/7, and the same company offers views of other historic sites in Rome and other cities around the world. There are a number of virtual reality videos of the building, including one from Oculus that opens with aerial views of gladiators battling on blood-soaked sand. Numerous gladiator games featuring varying levels of violence are available. Roman games are re-enacted each year at another ancient arena, in Nîmes, France. The Colosseum Virtual Walking Tour gives a good sense of what it’s like to visit the site and follow in the footsteps of those valiant gladiators. Parents who are helping their children with schoolwork during lockdown can search for a wide range of online educational resources, aimed at various grades and ages. Or else you could watch Gladiator again and marvel at director Ridley Scott’s epic vision of the glory and barbarity of ancient Rome. The real Colosseum is closed until April 13.
2) Louvre Museum, Paris, France
IN NORMAL times, the world’s most visited museum attracts 30,000 art lovers a day, or 9.6 million a year. This level of popularity means that, following its closure on March 13, refunding the cost of prebooked tickets may take up to three months, according to the Louvre’s website. The museum’s most famous exhibit is, of course, Leonardo’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. Frenzied crowds normally gather around the painting, and time limits of less than a minute have been imposed on visitors who had queued for two hours to see it. Given all this, contemplating that enigmatic smile from the comfort of your sofa on the museum’s site might seem an attractive option. Of course there’s a lot more to the Louvre than the Mona Lisa. There are 35,000 works on display, the oldest of which are more than 7,000 years old, so there’s plenty to help you while away the hours of self-isolation. A good place to start is the website’s “masterpieces” page, where you can find images of the Venus de Milo, Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, and Nicolas Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women. Other pages guide you through various selections, such as the French Revolution, portraits, landscapes and, I’m pleased to report, travel. I have to say I found parts of the official website rather creaky and old. However, with experts advising that viewing art can reduce stress, it’s still well worth a look. Some Louvre guides are available as iOS and Android apps. Closed until further notice.
3) Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy
THE POPE, like the rest of us, has been affected by the coronavirus – he has started delivering the Angelus Sunday prayer over the internet from inside the Vatican rather than while standing at a window overlooking St Peter’s Square. The address is shown on large screens in the square, and the idea is to pre-empt the vast crowds that normally gather there. The Vatican is best known to tourists for the Sistine Chapel with its sublime Michelangelo frescoes, but this is only one part of the Vatican’s treasures. The collection, amassed over the centuries by the Catholic Church and successive Popes, has 70,000 works, with 20,000 on display in 54 galleries. They include great pieces from ancient Rome and the Renaissance, which can be explored on the museums’ website through both videos and 360-degree tours. This really is a site where you can lose yourself for an hour or two as you study some of the greatest works of art ever created, picking up as much or as little detail as you wish. As with other attractions in this list, there are plenty of webcams, though it’s odd to see St Peter’s Square – designed and built to hold so many – empty. Museums closed.
4) Statue of Liberty, New York City, US
THE statue, which welcomed generations of immigrants to the US, sadly isn’t greeting anyone at the moment. But an excellent virtual tour combining text, photos and video clips is a fun way to learn about it. The tour can be viewed on the National Park Service’s Statue of Liberty site, which has a link to a particularly fine selection of webcams. There are views from the statue’s crown and torch, and an interactive panorama shows the New Jersey and New York skylines. The NPS has a slick iPad app that lets you explore the statue and the Ellis Island immigration museum. Lady Liberty has featured in numerous famous movies, most notably in the great reveal at the end of the original Planet of the Apes. The statue, a gift from the people of France, has a link with the next landmark in this list – Gustave Eiffel built its metal framework. Temporarily closed.
5) Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
THE exemplary official website is packed with information about every possible aspect of Gustave Eiffel’s tower, from its history and construction to its lights, lifts and, this being France, restaurants. Everything is splendidly illustrated and explained. Not surprisingly for such a distinctive and famous structure, there are numerous 360-degree virtual reality tours and webcams. An animated construction timelapse, illustrated with original photos of it taking shape, is pretty cool. Want some light relief after all those facts and figures on the official site? Well you’re in luck, as the tower has featured in many movies and TV shows – 150, according to the Internet Movie Database. The most famous include Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and A View to a Kill. In the latter, Roger Moore as James Bond memorably chases Grace Jones – playing the assassin, May Day – up the tower, only for her to escape using a parachute. Closed for “indefinite period of time”.
6) Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain
ONE of the world’s most protracted building projects has suffered a further delay, with work on Antoni Gaudi’s masterpiece stopping because of the coronavirus. Construction began in 1882, Gaudi took over as architect in 1883 and died in 1926, and the church remains largely incomplete. A selection of drawings and photos is available at WikiArquitectura. Google Streetview is a good choice for viewing famous buildings, and the interior of the church, with light streaming through the dazzlingly coloured stained-glass windows, are particularly striking. You can also appreciate the sharply angled detailing on the ceiling. Given the extravagant nature of the overall design, it’s odd to notice that instead of pews there are rows of cheap-looking foldaway chairs. Everything about this building is leisurely – Barcelona’s city authority granted planning permission for the project only last year. The church is due to be completed in 2026, and a terrific short animation on the Sagrada Familia Foundation’s YouTube channel shows how the work is due to proceed. Fans of the architect can enjoy a virtual visit to the Gaudi House Museum, also in Barcelona. Basilica (and museum) closed indefinitely.
7) French Quarter, New Orleans, US
OF ALL the wonderful places in this list, if things were normal this is where I’d most like to be right now. What would any of us give, in these joyless days of social distancing and shuttered bars, for an evening in Bourbon Street with all its life and music and colour? Zoom in on the French Quarter in this 3D guide to New Orleans and you’ll see the nightlife district in all its former glory. New Orleans is one of the worst-affected cities in the US. Residents have been instructed to stay at home, and businesses have been closed. An unwelcome consequence of this is that, as people have abandoned the streets, their place has been taken by rats. Normally the animals remain out of sight behind the restaurants. In what is undoubtedly the least appealing virtual travel offering in this post, a group of the animals was filmed in a French Quarter street, and the video attracted tens of thousands of hits on YouTube. Bars, cinemas closed, public urged to practice social distancing.
8) Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Netherlands
THERE’S been some social media chatter along the lines that Anne Frank, her family and others hid in a “secret annexe” for 761 days in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, so why complain about a couple of weeks at home watching Netflix? I’m not sure how helpful this is – seems a bit holier-than-thou – but in challenging times it’s probably good to remember stories of resilience and fortitude. The building with the annexe where Anne wrote her famous diary is now a museum, and its excellent website has plenty to interest the virtual traveller. You can look around the annexe, and if you have virtual reality glasses you can stroll through it. You can also see something that’s not open to the public – the house across town where the Franks lived before going into hiding. This is now a private home – it is let each year to a foreign “refugee writer” who cannot work freely in his or her own country – but a 360-degree tour is available on Google Arts & Culture. The house has been furnished as it was when the Frank family lived there. The site has extensive educational resources including digital lessons, and the museum’s YouTube channel has a large collection of videos about Anne and her life and legacy. In a new initiative, the diary has been recreated in video form as if Anne had been a vlogger. She is played by an actress, and most of the filming takes place in the annexe. New episodes are released each Monday and Thursday. Museum closed until June 1.
9) Willis Tower Skydeck, Chicago, US
I LOVE visiting observation platforms on high buildings, but like so much else it’s not possible now. This deck on the 103rd floor of the US’s third tallest building offers sweeping views of Chicago, Lake Michigan and, on a clear day, four states. The Skydeck Experience video on the attraction’s website gives a taste of what a visit would be like, from arriving at the building and going up in the lifts to gazing across the city. A popular feature, the Ledge, consists of glass boxes that protrude from the deck – you gaze down through the transparent floor at the street 412 metres below. Mind you, you might feel safer on your couch after learning that cracks appeared in the floor’s protective coating last year as tourists were standing on it. A Willis Tower spokesman told USA Today that no one had been in any danger, and the coating was repaired. The building, formerly called the Sears Tower, was the world’s tallest from 1974 to 1998. The story of its construction is told in a National Geographic documentary. It is seen toppling over in the 2018 Dwayne Johnson film Rampage, one of many films that have featured the landmark. Closed until April 30.
10) St. Mark's Square, Venice, Italy
VENICE has a special place in our hearts as Sue and I spent our honeymoon there 25 years ago this year. But take it from us, you’re better off at home than in Venice in July, when we married – endless mosquito bites (all that water, you see) is not the most romantic backdrop to the start of married life. Skyline has a live webcam feed from the top of the Basilica of San Marco that shows the square, though it has to be said that the vast, elegant space looks rather forlorn with hardly anyone in it. Italy is one of the countries that has been most severely affected by the pandemic, and a strict lockdown is in force in many cities, including Venice. Other webcams show views of landmarks that are also eerily quiet. The absence of cruise ships, tourists and boats on the canals has led to an improvement in water quality, though reports that dolphins had been seen in the deserted waterways proved to be fake news. A 360-degree virtual reality view of the square shows it in happier days. Venice has strict self-confinement rules.
Updated May 2020
VIDEOS
RELATED
ROYAL ASCOT, Wimbledon and Test matches at Lord’s are among the highlights of the UK’s summer social season. Find out how the coronavirus crisis is affecting them. READ MORE
MORE INFO – CORONAVIRUS
THE WORLD Health Organization’s site has latest news, rolling updates, advice on protecting yourself, and country and technical guidance. READ MORE
THE US GOVERNMENT’S coronavirus site, with information on preparing and protecting yourself, and what to do if you think you’re sick. READ MORE
THE WEBSITE of the UK’s National Health Service is always a good choice for information on a wide range of medical matters, and it has plenty of advice on coronavirus. READ MORE
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WELCOME TO OUR WORLD! Afaranwide’s home page – this is where you can find out about our latest posts and other highlights. READ MORE
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TROUBLED TIMES FOR EXPATS: Moving abroad can seem an idyllic prospect, but what happens when sudden upheavals or the inescapable realities of life intrude? READ MORE
Disclosure: Afaranwide is an affiliate of leading travel operators such as Booking.com and Japan Rail Pass. If you purchase through our site we receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. We only work with companies we have used and recommend.
LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH!
World's Top 10 Attractions... From Your Sofa
Self-Isolating? Missing Travel? Then Check Out Our Guide to Visiting the World's Most Popular Attractions in the Comfort of Your Home
COLIN SIMPSON
IF YOU love to travel then you don’t lose the urge to visit new places and experience different cultures even when, as now, that’s impossible. Countries remain in lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, few planes are taking off, and most tourist attractions are shut.
Fortunately for the millions of frustrated travellers who are staying at home, there are many online ways to explore the world, and virtual travel can be a great way to take your mind off the news for a while.
It takes several forms, such as 3D virtual reality tours, live webcams, videos, and museum sites that let you gaze at great works of art.
Here we’re looking at virtual ways to enjoy the world’s 10 most popular tourist attractions, based on TripAdvisor booking data. “These are some of the most historic and memorable sites in the world,” said spokesperson Laurel Greatrix. So enjoy – and stay safe.
Top picture: Rome’s Colosseum, named the world’s most popular draw for the second year running.
1) Colosseum, Rome, Italy
WHEN in Rome, it’s hard to miss this gigantic former gladiator arena, and it’s easy to keep an eye on it from your front room, too. Live webcams operated by Skyline are trained on the massive structure 24/7, and the same company offers views of other historic sites in Rome and other cities around the world.
There are a number of virtual reality videos of the building, including one from Oculus that opens with aerial views of gladiators battling on blood-soaked sand. Numerous gladiator games featuring varying levels of violence are available. Roman games are reenacted each year at another ancient arena, in Nîmes, France.
The Colosseum Virtual Walking Tour gives a good sense of what it’s like to visit the site and follow in the footsteps of those valiant gladiators. Parents who are helping their children with schoolwork during lockdown can search for a wide range of online educational resources, aimed at various grades and ages. Or else you could watch Gladiator again and marvel at director Ridley Scott’s epic vision of the glory and barbarity of ancient Rome. The real Colosseum is closed until April 13.
2) Louvre Museum, Paris, France
IN NORMAL times, the world’s most visited museum attracts 30,000 art lovers a day, or 9.6 million a year. This level of popularity means that, following its closure on March 13, refunding the cost of prebooked tickets may take up to three months, according to the Louvre’s website.
The museum’s most famous exhibit is, of course, Leonardo’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. Frenzied crowds normally gather around the painting, and time limits of less than a minute have been imposed on visitors who had queued for two hours to see it. Given all this, contemplating that enigmatic smile from the comfort of your sofa on the museum’s site might seem an attractive option.
Of course there’s a lot more to the Louvre than the Mona Lisa. There are 35,000 works on display, the oldest of which are more than 7,000 years old, so there’s plenty to help you while away the hours of self-isolation. A good place to start is the website’s “masterpieces” page, where you can find images of the Venus de Milo, Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, and Nicolas Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women.
Other pages guide you through various selections, such as the French Revolution, portraits, landscapes and, I’m pleased to report, travel. I have to say I found parts of the official website rather creaky and old. However, with experts advising that viewing art can reduce stress, it’s still well worth a look. Some Louvre guides are available as iOS and Android apps. Closed until further notice.
3) Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy
THE POPE, like the rest of us, has been affected by the coronavirus – he has started delivering the Angelus Sunday prayer over the internet from inside the Vatican rather than while standing at a window overlooking St Peter’s Square. The address is shown on large screens in the square, and the idea is to pre-empt the vast crowds that normally gather there.
The Vatican is best known to tourists for the Sistine Chapel with its sublime Michelangelo frescoes, but this is only one part of the Vatican’s treasures. The collection, amassed over the centuries by the Catholic Church and successive Popes, has 70,000 works, with 20,000 on display in 54 galleries. They include great pieces from ancient Rome and the Renaissance, which can be explored on the museums’ website through both videos and 360-degree tours.
This really is a site where you can lose yourself for an hour or two as you study some of the greatest works of art ever created, picking up as much or as little detail as you wish. As with other attractions in this list, there are plenty of webcams, though it’s odd to see St Peter’s Square – designed and built to hold so many – empty. Museums closed.
4) Statue of Liberty, New York City, US
THE statue, which welcomed generations of immigrants to the US, sadly isn’t greeting anyone at the moment. But an excellent virtual tour combining text, photos and video clips is a fun way to learn about it. The tour can be viewed on the National Park Service’s Statue of Liberty site, which has a link to a particularly fine selection of webcams.
There are views from the statue’s crown and torch, and an interactive panorama shows the New Jersey and New York skylines. The NPS has a slick iPad app that lets you explore the statue and the Ellis Island immigration museum. Lady Liberty has featured in numerous famous movies, most notably in the great reveal at the end of the original Planet of the Apes.
The statue, a gift from the people of France, has a link with the next landmark in this list – Gustave Eiffel built its metal framework. Temporarily closed.
5) Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
THE exemplary official website is packed with information about every possible aspect of Gustave Eiffel’s tower, from its history and construction to its lights, lifts and, this being France, restaurants. Everything is splendidly illustrated and explained.
Not surprisingly for such a distinctive and famous structure, there are numerous 360-degree virtual reality tours and webcams. An animated construction timelapse, illustrated with original photos of it taking shape, is pretty cool. Want some light relief after all those facts and figures on the official site? Well you’re in luck, as the tower has featured in many movies and TV shows – 150, according to the Internet Movie Database.
The most famous include Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and A View to a Kill. In the latter, Roger Moore as James Bond memorably chases Grace Jones – playing the assassin, May Day – up the tower, only for her to escape using a parachute. Closed for “indefinite period of time”.
6) Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain
ONE of the world’s most protracted building projects has suffered a further delay, with work on Antoni Gaudi’s masterpiece stopping because of the coronavirus. Construction began in 1882, Gaudi took over as architect in 1883 and died in 1926, and the church remains largely incomplete. A selection of drawings and photos is available at WikiArquitectura.
Google Streetview is a good choice for viewing famous buildings, and the interior of the church, with light streaming through the dazzlingly coloured stained-glass windows, are particularly striking. You can also appreciate the sharply angled detailing on the ceiling. Given the extravagant nature of the overall design, it’s odd to notice that instead of pews there are rows of cheap-looking foldaway chairs.
Everything about this building is leisurely – Barcelona’s city authority granted planning permission for the project only last year. The church is due to be completed in 2026, and a terrific short animation on the Sagrada Familia Foundation’s YouTube channel shows how the work is due to proceed. Fans of the architect can enjoy a virtual visit to the Gaudi House Museum, also in Barcelona. Basilica (and museum) closed indefinitely.
7) French Quarter, New Orleans, US
OF ALL the wonderful places in this list, if things were normal this is where I’d most like to be right now. What would any of us give, in these joyless days of social distancing and shuttered bars, for an evening in Bourbon Street with all its life and music and colour?
Zoom in on the French Quarter in this 3D guide to New Orleans and you’ll see the nightlife district in all its former glory. New Orleans is one of the worst-affected cities in the US. Residents have been instructed to stay at home, and businesses have been closed. An unwelcome consequence of this is that, as people have abandoned the streets, their place has been taken by rats.
Normally the animals remain out of sight behind the restaurants. In what is undoubtedly the least appealing virtual travel offering in this post, a group of the animals was filmed in a French Quarter street, and the video attracted tens of thousands of hits on YouTube. Bars, cinemas closed, public urged to practice social distancing.
8) Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Netherlands
THERE’S been some social media chatter along the lines that Anne Frank, her family and others hid in a “secret annexe” for 761 days in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, so why complain about a couple of weeks at home watching Netflix? I’m not sure how helpful this is – seems a bit holier-than-thou – but in challenging times it’s probably good to remember stories of resilience and fortitude.
The building with the annexe where Anne wrote her famous diary is now a museum, and its excellent website has plenty to interest the virtual traveller. You can look around the annexe, and if you have virtual reality glasses you can stroll through it.
You can also see something that’s not open to the public – the house across town where the Franks lived before going into hiding. This is now a private home – it is let each year to a foreign “refugee writer” who cannot work freely in his or her own country – but a 360-degree tour is available on Google Arts & Culture. The house has been furnished as it was when the Frank family lived there.
The site has extensive educational resources including digital lessons, and the museum’s YouTube channel has a large collection of videos about Anne and her life and legacy. In a new initiative, the diary has been recreated in video form as if Anne had been a vlogger. She is played by an actress, and most of the filming takes place in the annexe. New episodes are released each Monday and Thursday. Museum closed until June 1.
9) Willis Tower Skydeck, Chicago, US
I LOVE visiting observation platforms on high buildings, but like so much else it’s not possible now. This deck on the 103rd floor of the US’s third tallest building offers sweeping views of Chicago, Lake Michigan and, on a clear day, four states.
The Skydeck Experience video on the attraction’s website gives a taste of what a visit would be like, from arriving at the building and going up in the lifts to gazing across the city. A popular feature, the Ledge, consists of glass boxes that protrude from the deck – you gaze down through the transparent floor at the street 412 metres below.
Mind you, you might feel safer on your couch after learning that cracks appeared in the floor’s protective coating last year as tourists were standing on it. A Willis Tower spokesman told USA Today that no one had been in any danger, and the coating was repaired.
The building, formerly called the Sears Tower, was the world’s tallest from 1974 to 1998. The story of its construction is told in a National Geographic documentary. It is seen toppling over in the 2018 Dwayne Johnson film Rampage, one of many films that have featured the landmark. Closed until April 30.
10) St. Mark's Square, Venice, Italy
VENICE has a special place in our hearts as Sue and I spent our honeymoon there 25 years ago this year. But take it from us, you’re better off at home than in Venice in July, when we married – endless mosquito bites (all that water, you see) is not the most romantic backdrop to the start of married life.
Skyline has a live webcam feed from the top of the Basilica of San Marco that shows the square, though it has to be said that the vast, elegant space looks rather forlorn with hardly anyone in it. Italy is one of the countries that has been most severely affected by the pandemic, and a strict lockdown is in force in many cities, including Venice. Other webcams show views of landmarks that are also eerily quiet.
The absence of cruise ships, tourists and boats on the canals has led to an improvement in water quality, though reports that dolphins had been seen in the deserted waterways proved to be fake news. A 360-degree virtual reality view of the square shows it in happier days. Venice has strict self-confinement rules.
Updated May 2020
VIDEOS
RELATED
ROYAL ASCOT, Wimbledon and Test matches at Lord’s are among the highlights of the UK’s summer social season. Find out how the coronavirus crisis is affecting them. READ MORE
MORE INFO – CORONAVIRUS
THE WORLD Health Organization’s site has latest news, rolling updates, advice on protecting yourself, and country and technical guidance. READ MORE
THE US GOVERNMENT’S coronavirus site, with information on preparing and protecting yourself, and what to do if you think you’re sick. READ MORE
THE WEBSITE of the UK’s National Health Service is always a good choice for information on a wide range of medical matters, and it has plenty of advice on coronavirus. READ MORE
RECOMMENDED
WELCOME TO OUR WORLD! Afaranwide’s home page – this is where you can find out about our latest posts and other highlights. READ MORE
SHIMLA, QUEEN OF THE HILLS: Government officials once retreated to Shimla in the foothills of the Himalayas to escape India’s blazing hot summers. Now tourists make the same journey. READ MORE
TEN THINGS WE LEARNED: Our detailed guide to creating a website, one step at a time. The costs, the mistakes – it’s what we wish we’d known when we started blogging. READ MORE
TROUBLED TIMES FOR EXPATS: Moving abroad can seem an idyllic prospect, but what happens when sudden upheavals or the inescapable realities of life intrude? READ MORE
Afaranwide is an affiliate of leading travel operators such as Booking.com and Japan Rail Pass. If you purchase through our site we receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. We only work with companies we have used and recommend.