The Vatican Museums have launched a new YouTube channel and updated their website offering high-resolution images of their masterpieces along with mobile-friendly information.

The Musei Vaticani YouTube channel shows a number of short visual tours of some of its collections and a range of promotional videos highlighting tours and services offered on-site, including signing guides for deaf people.

Meanwhile its website has been overhauled to be compatible with all electronic platforms and devices.

Barbara Jatta, the museums' new director, said at a Vatican news conference yesterday that this was so it could reach into all the "remote corners of the earth".

Links to the site's pages, which are offered in five languages, can be shared via Twitter, Facebook or email. Jatta said that the site has a sleeker design and runs at a faster speed than before.

The site currently features a little more than 3,000 high-resolution photographs of masterpieces in the museums' collections.

Jatta said that the "ideal" plan is that within one year photographs of all 20,000 objects currently on public display will be shown. After that, the intention is to have images of 200,000 works of art.

As well as information about the museums, the site offers details on how to book visits to the Vatican Gardens, the "Via Triumphalis" necropolis under the Vatican hill and the pontifical villas at Castel Gandolfo, which is south of Rome.

The public can also search an online catalogue of some of the museums' paintings, sculptures and other art objects.

The museums are reportedly in the process of moving their entire inventory onto the site.