In light of both the ongoing mass digitisation projects of cultural heritage and the open access movement, the present essay attempts to outline a history of access to national museums, by approaching comparatively the histories of the establishment and development of five national museums in Europe: (a) the British Museum (London, Great Britain), (b) the Louvre (Paris, France), (c) the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), (d) the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg, Germany), and (e) the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (Greece). And it shows that this history can be seen as a series of challenges and transformations through which national museums change, and try to pursue their constitutive and perpetual goal to provide equal, universal access to knowledge and culture.