Let's start with the fact that there are museums in the network, which are not in real life.
First, there are situations when the Internet is the only space where you can "set" masterpieces for permanent review. So, recently, the Museum of Graphics appeared in RuNet (Printsmuseum.ru), where a huge On-Line graphics library of the XV-XX centuries are collected. Unique engravings, drawings, book illustrations, geographical maps simply can not be exhibited in the usual halls due to the windiness of the works. Light and temperature modifications can destroy fragile work.
Another interesting domestic virtual museum is a "communal apartment" (http://www.kommunalka.spb.ru), carrying into bending of Leningrad communal. Main Fishka - Video Excursion from the character named Ilya, who spends his children in an apartment, where he lived more than 30 years ago. Excursion begins with an entrance. Once here was the battleway left with pre-revolutionary times. In the elevator sat the lifter, who worked only up to eight in the evening, and turned off the elevator overnight. Together with the children, Ilya rises to the communal corridor type, which is now thickly populated. Enters the native room, where he lived and six more people ...
From the same series - the Russian virtual museum dedicated to the steam locomotive (http://rzd.ru/steams/index.html). Here you can feel like a real engine system: go to the locomotive from the depot, to pull the levers in the control cabin, pour water into the steam locomotive and even chat with passengers. All of them hit the train and travel in 1953!
The physicist scientist Ptolemy Archimedes is rising to the construction of one of the first nuclear power plants in Russia to implement its secret invention to the basic structure of the first nuclear power plant. Waldemar Finkytine is going to fall out of living Stalin with a stereo effect. You click on the character - and he will tell why she went to the past.
The second variety of museums existing only on the network is when "live museums" of some country or even the whole continent are united to create one common Internet museum. Such are the sites of the Virtual Museum of Canada (http://www.museevituel-virtualmuseum.ca), which unites 2500 Canadian museums, and the European Virtual Museum (http://www.eurpeanvirtualmuseum.net), covering the prehistoric period of Europe.
The last achievement in the virtual development of art is an art project from Google - www.googleartproject.com. Here you can look in all details more than a thousand works of art of 17 museums of the world. Gigapixel images allow us to bring the masterpiece to themselves so much that it can be seen every craklera (microcrack on the canvas. - Ed. ). You can enlarge the image of the JoconDa so that on the screen the close-up will be its mysterious brown eyes. The site is equipped with virtual tours that allow you to "stroll" to 385 chairs. From domestic museums at www.googleartproject.com presents the State Hermitage and the Tretyakov Gallery. From the collection of each museum there are several dozen works.
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Most of the modern virtual museums are a kind of "Internet branches" of all known real museums.
The most advanced site is perhaps the Louvre - www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp. Here you will be found a fun guide in the blue bowler and a surtuk. He will spend in his office, where vintage paper is scattered on the table, the room is clogged with a variety of globes, books, folders. Click on one of them - and fall into the section of interest. About many antiquities you can see cartoons. True, to assess a fully site, you need to know French, English or Chinese.
Once the site of the largest domestic museum - the State Hermitage (Hermitagemuseum.org) was the best in the country. But he has already been able to endure. Here are photos of all exhibits from the museum exposure. However, these photos bring closer as on the Google Art Project will not work. And their quality leaves much to be desired. You can familiarize yourself with the plans of the museum building - each floor is presented. Or climb on the roof of the Hermitage and admire the view of the palace square. Yes, and in the very museum you can look around. Only first will have to download the Special Java Applet program IBM HotMedia.
But the site of the Moscow Kremlin (http://tours.kremlin.ru) will please more. To begin with, you can admire the "Heart of Moscow" from the aerial view, to look at this or that tower, go through Red Square and listen to the historical certificate of attractions. By the way, reads the texts of Alexey Batalov. However, look at "from the legs to the head", for example, the Assumption Cathedral will not work. Only the bottom of the facility is visible. One of the most curious and in reality is unavailable for tourists - the famous chimes. A virtual tour allows you to look into the Spasskaya Tower and consider the mechanisms that can work for centuries without interruptions. Well, and then - why not wander through the halls of the Kremlin? Here are impressive "chambers": within a number of double-headed eagles that decorated our coat of arms in different centuries. True, the quality of image resolution leaves much to be desired. The most interesting is the Cabinet of the President. Want to sit at the desk of the head of state? You are welcome!
In the American White Among the Pleasiest. Website whitehousemuseum.org/ Procedure is outdated. You can consider the plans of the US President's Residence Building. Not only modern, but also historical. It is curious that in a modern White House almost a whole floor is assigned to the press and the press service of the residence. They have even self-catering. And on the second floor, a separate room is assigned under the solarium.