Take a free VR tour through some of the best museums in China

Get cultured while stuck at home

While stuck at home, why not get cultured at museums that you wouldn't otherwise have time for? As China is advising everybody to stay indoors, some of the best museums in Beijing and other cities across the country are putting their exhibitions online in VR format for free. Here is a list of good ones worth your time.

The Palace Museum

The most stunning virtual tour on the list, it gives a panoramic view of the Beijing Palace Museum, better known as The Forbidden City, which used to act as the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of imperial rule in 1912. Accompanied by imperial music, the VR tour itself is a work of art and it’s definitely worthy of your time – you’ll never see a completely empty Palace Museum in real life. 

📍Extract the QR code above to take a glimpse. 

Shanghai History Museum

Photo: Yang Xiaozhe

A beautiful and detailed online tour to the horserace-club-turned-museum that houses more than a thousand relics and chronicles 6,000 years of history from the Shanghai region. If you have ever wondered what Old Shanghai was like, you can find the answer here. Divided into two sections – Ancient Shanghai and Modern Shanghai – the museum traces the political, social, economic and cultural evolution of the city from 4000BCE to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. 

📍Extract the QR code above to take a glimpse. 

Suzhou Museum

Photo: 塬/Unsplash

Located in the historic quarter of Suzhou an hour away from Shanghai, Suzhou Museum is an exquisite piece of architecture designed by the late Chinese-American architect IM Pei who is also known for the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre in Paris and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong. The VR tour allows you to take a look at the architecture that blends Suzhou characteristics so well with modern sensibility. Prepared to be dazzled by the artistry in an incredible 3D version that allows you to take a 360-degree look at this treasure.

📍Extract the QR code above to take a glimpse. 

Sanxingdui site

Photo: Massimo Virgilio/Unsplash

If archaeology is your thing, then this one is for you. Located in the north of Chengdu, the Sanxingdui excavation site houses bronze artefacts that are more than 3,000 years old and may have belonged to the ancient kingdom of Shu. The virtual tour takes you on a journey of hundreds of exquisite artefacts including bronze, gold, stone and jade that challenges the traditional theory that Chinese civilisation originated from the central plains of the Yellow River. 

📍Extract the QR code above to take a glimpse. 

Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum

Photo: Aaron Greenwood via Unsplash

This is the excavation site of a huge number of life-sized terra cotta soldiers and horses in Xian, buried together with Emperor Qinshihuang (259-210 BC), the first emperor to unify Imperial China. The VR tour gives a two-million-pixel resolution look at the museum, where you can not only zoom in to see each warrior in great detail, but also can ‘walk’ down the excavation pit to see the statues up close, which is normally forbidden to tourists. 

📍Extract the QR code above to take a glimpse. 

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