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.

So very true.

Particularly true about the Sistine Chapel. This virtual view is outstanding, but can't possibly come anything close to seeing it in person. https://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.htm...

I'm going to be the contrarian: Unless you're getting an exclusive viewing and you wake fresh with a singular goal, seeing the great art of the world is likely to be a compromised experience. When overwhelming beauty and art surrounds you, and a hectic schedule dogs you, everything is dulled and the experience becomes almost a fog. My experience going through the Sistine Chapel was almost an aside to just days of overwhelming artistry, so I gave it barely the respect it deserved. I've enjoyed and experienced it virtually magnitudes more.

A couple of years ago I did a trip to Belgium and France. Saw all of the sights, loads of museums, and did a tonne of wandering. It was a great time, but was overwhelming. I came home and maybe a week later we were browsing YouTube on the TV and came across a channel that just walks around neighbourhoods of Japan (e.g. Shibuya, Tokyo, among others. The channel is Virtual Japan). A couple of hours of walking a stabilized camera through the streets of a Japanese city. My son came in and watched with me while we looked at storefronts, read restaurant menus, walked through malls, virtually participated in pedestrian scrambles, etc). The weirdest thing is that days later my "trip" to Japan felt much more real than my trip to Belgium and France (or any prior trip I'd ever taken). Absent all of the worries and hustle and overwhelming inputs, somehow this completely not real experience felt much more real, and to this day I feel like I've been to Japan, while so many other countries that I've physically been to and experienced for weeks seem like almost a dream. It really was a fascinating experience for me.

It made me wonder if there is a business in on-demand telepresence for this sort of virtual travel. "Uber" someone technologically enabled to walk around an area, look at things you want and follow directions. Add some dystopian elements to it and soon they're getting in fights at your request.

It sounds like you've discovered the secret to travel. You don't have to see all the sights or cram everything into each day. Usually you get more out of it if you take things slowly, be intentional about what you really want to do, and savor each experience. With two small kids now, we usually pick one city per trip and plan (at most) one morning activity and one afternoon/evening activity. Sometimes it's one activity per day, sometimes it's none (maybe we just meander around a neighborhood between meals, like your Virtual Japan experience). Like you said, if you see 10 different Roman churches in one day, the Sistine Chapel becomes just another fresco.

I spent 3 days in Venice; you can't even scratch the surface in 3 days, but I'd say 3 days is about enough for one visit. If you want to see more, book another visit.

Quite a lot of fine art in Venice isn't in crowded museums; some of it's in little churches, away from the crowds, and some is in smaller private museums, away from the day-tripper trail.

I've never been to Florence. I hear that's overwhelming.