The Tirol Panorama

One of only 20 such paintings to survive, the magnificent circular Tirol Panorama depicts - on 1,000 square meters – a series of epic battles for freedom fought by Tyrolean soldiers against Napoleon’s army in 1806.

When you stand in the middle of the circular painting, surrounded by the landscape of Innsbruck as it presented itself in the early 1800s, you’ll feel as if you had taken a journey back in time. The minute details of traditional costumes, uniforms, landscapes and buildings really make the painting come alive. The painting is so realistic you’ll suddenly believe an amusing anecdote from when it was first revealed to the public in 1896: an elderly farmer jumped over the hand-rail on to the three-dimensional foreground of the painting, where he used his hat to try to extinguish a tin-foil fire that he thought was real. 

After a long history of travel through Europe, the painting underwent extensive renovations, and is now housed at the Tirol Panorama in Innsbruck, alongside the Kaiserjäger Museum on Bergisel, where more than 200 years ago, with a battle against the Bavarian occupiers, the story began.