Walmgate, Layerthorpe and Clifford's Tower - how they looked 200 years ago

The artist painted many scenes of York in the early 1800s, including two on these pages today. One shows a half-timbered cottage in Walmgate: a strangely idyllic scene, with what looks very like the tower of Fishergate Postern peeping up in the distance.

A second Cave painting from about the same time shows Walmgate Bar from the outside. Again, it is a rural scene, with a mud road leading up to the Bar, and a row of what look like brick farmworkers' cottages built against the ancient stone.

We don't know how accurately either of these oil paintings portray the York of their day . Artists then had a habit of 'romanticising' the views they painted – just look at George Nicholson the Younger's oil painting of Clifford's Tower, which dates from 1838. The painting shows the tower rearing high on a wooded crag above a River Ouse that winds beneath. York's medieval castle has certainly never looked anything like that. So we have to doubt whether, even 200 years ago, Layerthorpe Bridge and Postern looked quite the way Nicholson painted them, the River Foss gleaming peacefully under what looks like a moonlit sky.

Nevertheless, these scenes of York from hundreds of years ago give us a glimpse of the city as it may once have been, even if only in an artist's imagination.

The good news is that you can now see these paintings – and thousands more like them – at the click of a button As we reported a week ago, York Museums Trust has put details of more than 160,000 objects from its collections online, moreb than 50,000 of them with photographs.

They include thousands of paintings from York Art Gallery; Roman, Viking and medieval treasures from the Yorkshire Museum; costumes from the Castle Museum, and even photographs of fossils and insect collections.

Layerthorpe Bridge and Postern by George Nicholson the younger, 1829

Many have not been on public display for years, if ever. And they are all there for you to scroll through at the click of a mouse. Simply visit yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk, click on 'collections' and start browsing.

With the art gallery still closed for its major refurbishment, we've focused today mainly on its huge collection of art works.

The 'online gallery' includes countless scenes of York and North Yorkshire by painters ranging from Henry Cave and George Nicholson to JMW Turner; an astonishing collection of nudes by York's best-known artist, William Etty; and paintings inspired by classical scenes.

There are also some wonderful gems that you'll stumble across as you browse: Etty's (fully clothed) study of the crochet-worker Mary Ann Purdon, her face a picture of concentration; a glorious Biblical scene by James Ward, painted in 1832, showing a 'disobedient' prophet slumped in a cave beside a magnificent lion; and a mysterious portrait of an unknown woman in a green dress, who peers at you out of the portrait with lively black eyes. It was painted during the time of Charles I – possibly during the Civil War – but we don't know who the woman was, or even who painted her. That just makes her all the more fascinating...

You can see all the paintings on these pages today, plus countless more images, just by visiting yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk. Click on the collections button and you're away. Happy browsing...