The Dresden Panometer is an attraction in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It is a venue displaying one of two panoramic paintings of Austrian-born artist Yadegar Asisi inside a former

gasometer A gas holder or gasholder, also known as a gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressu ...

, accompanied by an exhibition. One of the two panoramas, ''Baroque Dresden'' depicts Dresden as it might have appeared in 1756, the other, ''Dresden 1945'' shows the city after it was destroyed during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The Panometer was created in 2006 by Asisi, who coined the name as a portmanteau of "panorama" and "gasometer". In 2003 he had opened a Panometer in Leipzig. Since mid-2015, the panoramas ''Baroque Dresden'' and ''Dresden 1945'' have been shown alternately.

Building

The Dresden Panometer occupies a disused telescopic gas holder in Reick, built in 1879–80. The gasometer is in height and in diameter. Buildings of this type are particularly suitable for panoramic pictures due to their circular shape and ample interior space.Gasbehälter (Gasometer) und Gaswerke in Deutschland
Oliver Frühschütz. Ein Dornröschen erwacht...
DREWAG. Interview with Yadegar Asisi.

Panoramas and exhibition

Dresden 1756

The panorama hangs on the inner wall and is in height and in circumference. It is viewed from a raised platform in the centre, and uses perspective to create a realistic sense of distance. It portrays the baroque Dresden skyline of 1756 – for the most part historically accurate, but with some artistic modifications – as seen from the

Katholische Hofkirche Dresden Cathedral, or the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Dresden, previously the Catholic Church of the Royal Court of Saxony, called in German Katholische Hofkirche and since 1980 also known as Kathedrale Sanctissimae Trinitatis, is the Catholi ...

. There is a musical soundtrack by the Belgian composer Eric Babak.»1756 Dresden« – unfold the myth
Home page. The circular walkway between the panorama and the outer wall contains an exhibition on the creation of the painting and the old Dresden skyline. It features historic city maps and original drawings from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as paintings of the skyline by Asisi himself. There is also a large bell from the Neustädter Rathaus and exterior decorations from now-demolished buildings. Asisi's research in creating the panorama was based on several ''

vedute A ''veduta'' (Italian for "view"; plural ''vedute'') is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often, print of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of ''vedute'' are referred to as ''vedutisti''. Origins This genre ...

'': precise, historic drawings of the city skyline. The most important ''veduta'' painter in mid-18th century Dresden was

Bernardo Bellotto Bernardo Bellotto (c. 1721/2 or 30 January 172117 November 1780), was an Italian urban landscape painter or ''vedutista'', and printmaker in etching famous for his ''vedute'' of European cities – Dresden, Vienna, Turin, and Warsaw. He was th ...

(nephew of

Canaletto Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto (), was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. Painter of city views or ...

, and sometimes actually known by that name), whose pictures can be precisely dated. The Dresden Panometer received over 500,000 visitors in its first two years from December 2006. Asisi planned to display the panorama until 2016 which is prolonged until today.

Dresden 1945

Tragedy and hope of a European city. Using a 1:1 scale, the DRESDEN 1945 panorama takes you on a journey back in time to the immediate aftermath of the Allied bombing raids in 1945. The 15 m high visitor’s tower provides you with a 360-degree view from the tower of Dresden’s Town Hall and reveals the extent of the destruction in the panorama by Yadegar Asisi, almost 3,000 m² in size. The project does not merely show the tragedy of Dresden, but uses several pillars to draw attention to the interactions of Europe’s war-torn history. By 1945, many German cities were destroyed, but so was a large number of other European, such as Rotterdam, Coventry, Stalingrad and Warsaw.

External links

Home page in English

Notes

{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Dresden Panorama photography Tourist attractions in Dresden