By: Felicia LaLomia
As travel to Italy remains an uncertainty, tourists, itching for a taste of their hometown or region, can still get a virtual view of the old country’s most coveted museums and sites.
From history to art, music to architecture, food to culture, you’ll get a full experience of what Italy has to offer, or at least enough to keep you occupied until it’s safe to travel again.
Museums
Many museums in Italy currently have virtual tours of their exhibits and ruins, all around the country. And lucky for us, it’s all free. Immerse yourself in the history and culture of Italy while staying safe on your couch.
The Vatican Museums has online resources that make you feel like you are practically there. They have over a dozen different 360-degree tours of all the glorious halls and beautiful ceilings, plus videos of many of their other rooms and wings.
La Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence is one of Italy’s most visited museums and perhaps the most well known. And they have numerous online exhibits to keep you occupied for hours. Explore the wondrous, eye popping galleries and exhibits in high definition renderings here.
It’s hard to imagine that this entire museum is solely dedicated to the Ara Pacis, an ancient monument inaugurated in 9 B.C. Take your sweet time absorbing every detail this altar for the Roman goddess of peace has to show in the virtual tour.
Google Arts and Culture also has 171 collections and exhibits from Italian museums including art, theaters and libraries.
Stream through cities steeped in culture
Put on your sunglasses and click here, you’ll be able to find live streamed footage of just about any city you can think of. Pisa? Genoa? Florence? The gorgeous sites of Rome? They’re all there.
If you want to feel like you’re looking out the window of your luxury hotel across the cool, blue waters of Lake Como, the Grand Hotel Tremezzo is live streaming their views 24/7. They even have hypnotic time lapses to choose from if you want to see through the night.
And if you just want a taste of what a normal trip to Rome would have been like, sit back and relax for this two-hour walking tour through the streets of Rome.
Listen to Italian opera
Nothing makes you feel like a cultured member of society more than listening to Opera.
Since the coronavirus struck Italy, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice has been posting concerts on their YouTube page for everyone to enjoy.
Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, one of the most well respected music academies in the world, has posted many concerts on their YouTube page.
Teatro Comunale in Bologna have posted three of their opera concerts from last season — Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Barbiere di Siviglia.
Cook with one of the best Italian chefs
The world-renowned, michelin star chef Massino Bottura is bringing us into his kitchen. Through his Instagram series called Kitchen Quarantine, Bottura walks viewers through how to cook everything from pizza to chocolate chip cookies to pasta al pomodoro.
