For nearly two years, Eilat Lieber, director and chief curator of the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem’s Old City, has been excited for this April, when Passover, Easter and Ramadan — touchstone holidays of three major religions — would collide for the first time in nearly two decades.

To prepare for the 400,000 or so tourists who had been projected to visit Jerusalem this April, the Tower of David Museum began collaborating with two virtual reality production houses — Blimey, based in Israel, and OccupiedVR, based in Canada — to create an immersive augmented reality experience for the crowds expected at its medieval stone citadel.

And then coronavirus shut everything down. Israel closed its borders to foreign visitors; all nonresidents are now banned from the Old City. So Ms. Lieber made the decision to put “The Holy City,” a virtual reality experience that lets viewers drop in on Jerusalem’s holiest sites and festivals, online for free starting April 9. Her move came as virtual reality experiences of holy sites across the globe are more readily available, allowing shut-in pilgrims of multiple religions a window into virtual worship in an unprecedented time.