A 360-degree tour of the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin put together in 2020 explores all the exhibition spaces and works on display in the museum. Detailed information such as texts introducing the exhibition areas, audio recordings, videos and links to an online database provide comprehensive access to one of the world’s most important collections of European painting.
All 58 rooms of the Gemäldegalerie were recorded in 112 high-res, 360-degree panoramas. Users can click on each of the almost 1,200 paintings on exhibit to see the key information about the work. 740 works are linked up with the corresponding object pages on Collections Online, the online portal for the collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, while a further 80 links lead to Google Arts & Culture, with high-resolution images that users can zoom in on.
For each room, users can bring up a thematic text that contextualises the works and points out the main highlights. What’s more, the tour features more than 100 audio-guide entries and 20 videos.
The tour starts in the Gemäldegalerie’s rotunda. From there, users can click their way from room to room, or jump straight to any location they like via the site map. Other ways of accessing the collection are provided by the alphabetical artist list or a list of 200 selected masterpieces. The ever-changing use of the central foyer is illustrated with a slideshow featuring photos from the past 20 years.
All the information and functions can be accessed through the menu bar at the bottom of the pictures. The entire tour, including all the text, is offered in both German and English.
The idea for this panoramic tour was a result of the initiative of Marion Knauf, Chair of the Kaiser Friedrick Museumsverein. This group supports the Gemäldegalerie and the Skulpturensammlung of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The tour was conceived and implemented by their member Wolfgang Gülcker, who worked closely with the Gemäldegalerie.
The Bode-Museum can also be explored through a virtual tour, which was likewise conceived by Wolfgang Gülcker and released in 2015. In it, 62 360° panoramas capture almost the entire ground floor and the majority of the upper floor of this architectural jewel on the Museumsinsel Berlin. The tour offers information on 850 works from the Skulpturensammlung and the Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, including masterpieces from the early Middle Ages through to the late 18th century, artworks from late antiquity and the Byzantine Empire, and everyday objects from just about every region in the ancient Mediterranean: smb.museum/bode-museum-360.