In the mid-19th century,
panoramic paintings and models became a very popular way to represent
landscapes, topographic views and
historical events. Audiences of Europe in this period were thrilled by the aspect of illusion,
immersed in a winding 360° panorama and given the impression of standing in a new environment. The
panorama was a
360° visual medium patented under the title
Apparatus for Exhibiting Pictures by the artist
Robert Barker in 1787. The earliest that the word "panorama" appeared in print was on June 11, 1791, in the British newspaper
The Morning Chronicle, referring to this visual spectacle. Barker created a painting, shown on a cylindrical surface and viewed from the inside, giving viewers a vantage point encompassing the entire circle of the horizon, rendering the original scene with high fidelity. The inaugural exhibition, a "View of Edinburgh" (specifically the view from the summit of
Calton Hill), was first shown in that city in 1788, then transported to London in 1789. By 1793, Barker had built "The Panorama"
rotunda at the center of London's entertainment district in
Leicester Square, where it remained attracting visitors for 70 years, then closing in 1863, before being converted into the church of
Notre Dame de France. Inventor Sir
Francis Ronalds developed a machine to remove errors in
perspective that were created when a sequence of planar sketches was combined into a cylinder. It also projected the cylindrical drawing onto the wall of the rotunda at much larger scale to enable its accurate painting. The apparatus was exhibited at the
Royal Polytechnic Institution in the early 1840s. Large scale installations enhance the illusion for an audience of being surrounded with a real landscape. The
Bourbaki Panorama in
Lucerne, Switzerland was created by
Edouard Castres in 1881. The painting measures about 10 meters in height with a
circumference of 112 meters. In the same year of 1881, the
Dutch marine painter
Hendrik Willem Mesdag created and established the
Panorama Mesdag of
The Hague, Netherlands, a cylindrical painting more than 14 meters high and roughly 40 meters in diameter (120 meters in circumference). In the United States of America is the
Atlanta Cyclorama, depicting the
Civil War Battle of Atlanta. It was first displayed in 1887, and is 42 feet high by 358 feet circumference (13 × 109 meters). Also on a gigantic scale, and still extant, is the
Racławice Panorama (1893) located in
Wrocław, Poland, which measures 15 × 120 meters. In addition to these historical examples, there have been panoramas painted and installed in modern times; prominent among these is the
Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles, California (2004). == Photographs ==