Far be it from us to dissuade you from visiting Madrid's Museo Nacional del Prado, one of the best museums in the world. But today Google unveiled the next best thing. A new layer on Google Earth offers highly detailed views of 14 paintings from the museum, including Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's The 3rd of May, 1808 in Madrid, and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. And by highly detailed, we mean images that contain as many as 14 million pixels. We are talking about the ability to read the brushstrokes, the weave of the canvas underneath, and the cracks in the paint from age. You can't get that kind of resolution at the museum--at least not without placing your nose flat against the canvas and risking the wrath of Prado's muscled security. 

To view, open up Google Earth and fly to Museo del Prado. Make sure that you have the 3D buildings layer turned "on."

Don't know what we're talking about? Visit the Google Earth landing page to learn more.