717 Gigapixel Image of Rembrandt's Nightwatch

Seeing Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum a decade or so ago totally changed my view of seeing things in a museum vs. seeing them online. I'm a child of the internet and had this view that seeing it on my screen was good enough, but wow is Night Watch incredible up close and in person. Overwhelming, almost. A totally different experience.

That said, this image is amazing, and lets you see a lot more detail than you can easily manage at the museum.

Never been to Amsterdam, but I felt the same way at other major art museums. Although I think the best aspect of going to a museum is not necessarily seeing the most popular painting. For instance, when I went to the Louvre, which --- and I say this as a person who is not a huge fan of tourist traps --- is one of the best things to visit in Paris, of course there are the most famous works (e.g., the Mona Lisa), which are good (don't get me wrong on this), but 90% of the stuff in the museum is not really being looked at closely by everyone. One of the best things about a really big museum is just going and looking at art that you never knew about before. Just taking a closer look at pieces and getting a new new favorites. I took a few notes when I was visiting!

Side note on going to the Louvre. I went last summer and, thanks to Covid, had to reserve my (free --- thanks EU!) spot (which I did only a few hours before). As a result, getting into the museum was very quick. Surely, this had to do with the reduced number of people in Paris, too, but I now think that entrance by reservation is a pretty good system generally for such popular spots.