Virtual Museum Tour: a new way to visit a museum in Canada
The exhibition comes down. The tour stays open.
A Matterport 3D tour of a museum starts at $395 by floor area; an exhibition hall of 1,500 to 5,000 sq. ft. runs $495 to $795. A hall is scanned in half a day, outside opening hours, the tour delivered within 24 to 48 hours in most cases across Quebec. 1,000+ Google Maps tours since 2015. Call us at 514 262-9248.
- Captured outside opening hours: evening or Saturday morning
- Online within 24 to 48 hours
- 2D floor plan and 1 year of hosting included
- Matterport Service Partner
They trust us
A temporary exhibition, preserved in 3D.
An exhibition takes months of research, design and installation, and then it is taken down. A museum virtual tour captured before deinstallation keeps a faithful copy: the rooms, the hanging, the labels, the lighting. It keeps welcoming the public and school groups, and documents your work for your reports and your grant applications.
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Archive before deinstallation
Capture in the final days of the exhibition, outside opening hours. The tour stays online at the same address as long as hosting is renewed.
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An audience beyond your region
The link is shared on your website, in your newsletter and on your Google Maps listing. According to Matterport, Fujifilm’s innovation centre received six times more visitors online than in person.
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Interpretation in the space
Information tags in front of the works: text, photos, videos, documents, links to your online collections. A guided tour leads the visitor from stop to stop.
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Accessible to everyone
A person with reduced mobility, a distant classroom or a researcher abroad explores your rooms in a browser, with no app. According to Matterport, the interface has worked better with keyboards and screen readers since 2026.
A real tour to explore
Best virtual museum tours: examples in 3D
Step inside an exhibition scanned in 3D: a temporary exhibition captured with the rooms empty, with five information tags. Click to walk through it: move from one panel to the next, approach the display cases and open the tags.
Six uses of a virtual tour in a museum.
Archive a temporary exhibition
A capture in the final days, and the 3D virtual exhibition remains available after deinstallation: for the public, your reports and your grant applications.
Interpretation and guided tour
Information tags in front of the works with your texts, your audio and video clips, your links to the collection; an auto-play guided tour, like an audio guide.
Remote classrooms
A teacher projects the exhibition in class, from another region or another country; the educational guide in PDF opens in a tag.
Accessibility and outreach
People who cannot travel tour the rooms; tourists discover your museum on its Google Maps listing before their stay.
Built heritage
A church, a historic house or a threatened site: a dated, measurable 3D survey, with a floor-by-floor plan, before work or a closure.
Historical societies and municipal exhibition centres
A cultural centre (maison de la culture) or an interpretation centre shares each exhibition with residents and keeps the 2D floor plan to prepare the next one.
You stay in control
Your interpretation team adds its content itself.
On request, your team receives access to the Matterport editor for the tour. It writes its information tags, uploads an audio clip or a video, links a work to its record in the online collection and updates the tour at the pace of its programming.
- Add or edit information tags: text, photos, videos, audio, PDFs, links
- Name rooms and place labels
- Create an auto-play guided tour
- Choose the starting view and hide the storage areas and offices
- Editor access: $150 per year
Public pricing
Pricing based on floor area.
The price depends on the floor area captured. An exhibition room is often 1,500 to 5,000 sq. ft.: expect $495 to $795, capture, 3D tour, 2D floor plan and one year of hosting included.
From$395
| Under 1,500 sq. ft. | $395 |
|---|---|
| 1,501 to 2,500 sq. ft. | $495 |
| 2,501 to 3,500 sq. ft. | $595 |
| 3,501 to 4,500 sq. ft. | $695 |
| 4,501 to 5,500 sq. ft. | $795 |
| 5,501 to 6,500 sq. ft. | $895 |
| 6,501 to 7,500 sq. ft. | $995 |
| 7,501 to 8,500 sq. ft. | $1,095 |
| 8,501 to 9,500 sq. ft. | $1,195 |
| 9,501 to 10,500 sq. ft. | $1,295 |
| Several pavilions or more than 10,500 sq. ft. | Quote within 24 hours |
| Standard branding: menu in your colours | $100 to $250 |
|---|---|
| Custom branding: menu by room or by exhibition, bilingual | $500 to $650 |
| Writing the information tags and integrating your media | $90/hr |
| Publication on Google Maps (Street View)Non-residential locations only | +$100 |
| 360 aerial views by drone: the building and its site | $450 to $495 |
| Editor access for your team | $150/year |
| Hosting after the first year | from $150/year |
- Prices in Canadian dollars, taxes extra.
- Travel fee of $0.73/km beyond about 100 km from Montreal; several sites in the same region captured on one route share this fee.
Good to know: exhibited works have rights holders
Putting an exhibition online means reproducing the works it contains. Before the capture, you confirm that you hold the publication rights to the works, texts and images, or the consent of their rights holders; a work that is not covered is blurred or excluded. The 3D tour is a faithful copy of your rooms, not a complete virtual museum: each work is seen in its space, not digitized one by one in high definition.
A virtual museum tour, as seen by the public
On a Thursday morning, a teacher in Rouyn-Noranda projects your exhibition on the history of the river onto the board. The students stop in front of a model schooner and open the tag: an audio clip from the curator, an archival photo, a link to the object’s record in your collection. That evening, a grandfather who no longer climbs stairs takes the tour again with his granddaughter. The exhibition closed in March; it is now November.
That is what a virtual museum tour does: it keeps your rooms open for those who will not come, and makes the others want to come and see the rest. On your Google Maps listing, it appears for tourists looking for something to visit.
Archive an exhibition before it is taken down
A temporary exhibition is a considerable amount of work that gets taken down after a few months. A capture in the final days, with the rooms empty and the exhibition lighting on, keeps a faithful copy: the 3D virtual exhibition remains available at the same address, with the dollhouse view of the rooms, the floor-by-floor plan and the measurements of every display wall.
The public and school groups keep visiting it. Your annual report and your grant applications show the exhibition as it was, not only in photos. Your exhibition designer reuses the floor plan and the measurements from the Matterport 3D virtual tour to prepare the next one.
Interpretation, right in the rooms
A Matterport museum is not a series of photos: it is a space in which content is placed. In front of each work, a tag opens with the label text, an audio clip, a video, a PDF or a link to your online collection. A guided tour strings the stops together in auto-play, like an audio guide. A link can lead directly to a specific work, for a newsletter or an article.
Your interpretation team writes its own information tags with editor access, or entrusts the content to us at $90 per hour. The menu in your colours, the sections by room and the bilingual version come under the enhanced virtual tour.
Art galleries, historical societies, exhibition centres
An art gallery virtual tour extends the hanging beyond opening hours and attracts collectors who discover the gallery on Google Maps. For the Galerie du Vieux Saint-Jean, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, and for Le Balcon d’Art, in Saint-Lambert, we produced Google Street View tours published on their Google Business Profile, with HDR processing that respects the colours of the canvases. For a gallery, the Google virtual tour is often the right starting point; the 3D tour is added when you want the floor plan, the measurements and the tags. The Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan, in Montreal, has its own; the exhibition room at the top of this page shows what a temporary exhibition captured in 3D looks like. See our portfolio.
Historical societies, interpretation centres and municipal exhibition rooms have the same needs with small teams: a room of 1,501 to 2,500 sq. ft. is captured in a few hours for $495, and several sites in the same region are grouped on one route. If your room belongs to the city, see also the virtual tour for municipalities.
Built heritage in Quebec: a dated 3D survey
A church for sale, an ancestral home before restoration, an industrial building slated for demolition: a heritage virtual tour in Quebec serves first as a survey. The Matterport Pro3 camera measures every space, accurate to ±20 mm at 10 m according to Matterport, and the model carries a date. Architects and preservation committees take their measurements from it; the point cloud and the drawings are ordered from the same capture through 3D building scanning. Aerial drone views show the building on its site.
Why trust Panosphere 360 with your museum’s virtual tour
- A single person, from the quote to training your team: Marc Durand Bréard.
- Institutions that have trusted us: Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan, Radio-Canada, McGill University, HEC Montréal.
- Over 1,000 tours published on Google Maps since 2015.
- Matterport Service Partner, Pro3 camera, certified drone pilot.
- Captures outside opening hours, in the evening or on Saturday morning, with the rooms empty.
- Public prices, a written quote within 24 hours and service in French across Quebec.
Preparing an exhibition in an educational institution? See the school virtual tour. Check our prices or request a quote: reply within 24 hours.
Frequently asked questions
Your questions, our answers.
Another question? Write to marc@panosphere360.com or call 514 262-9248.
Can a temporary exhibition be archived before it is taken down?
Yes. We capture in the final days of the exhibition, outside opening hours; the tour is online 24 to 48 hours later in most cases and stays at the same address as long as hosting is renewed (one year included, then from $150 per year).
When do you capture a museum?
When the rooms are empty: in the evening, on Saturday morning or on a closing day, with the exhibition lighting on. According to Matterport, allow 1 to 3 hours for 1,000 to 4,000 sq. ft.
How does interpretation work in the tour?
Information tags are placed in front of the works: text, photos, video, audio, PDF or a link to the work’s record in your collection. A guided tour strings together narrated stops in auto-play. You write them yourself, or we do it at $90 per hour.
What about the copyright on the exhibited works?
Publishing a work online requires the consent of its rights holders: it is up to you to obtain it, as for a catalogue. For a loaned work, check the loan agreement. A work that is not covered is blurred or excluded.
Can visitors see the works in detail?
You can approach a painting and read a label without difficulty: the Matterport Pro3 camera produces high-resolution panoramas. It is not a digitization of each work; for a detail, add your photo in the tag.
Is the tour accessible to people with disabilities?
It opens in a browser, with no app, on a computer, a tablet or a phone. According to Matterport, the interface redesigned in 2026 works better with keyboards and screen readers. Your information tags can contain the label text and the transcript of the audio clips.
Can the tour be bilingual?
Yes. The interface displays in French or in English depending on the link shared. The content entered is not translated automatically: your information tags are written in both languages, and so is the menu of a custom branding.
Do you also do churches and heritage buildings?
Yes. The 3D survey is dated and measurable, accurate to ±20 mm at 10 m according to Matterport, with point cloud and drawings as options for architects. According to Matterport, the Italian firm e-Making cut the survey time of historic buildings by 70% with this method.
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Let’s talk about your project.
A 30-minute call is enough to settle the area, the deliverables and the price. Written quote within 24 hours, large buildings included.