Cyclorama At Gettysburg

During my internship at Gettysburg National Military Park, I learned that we had a variety of amenities and attractions to accommodate the 1.2 million visitors that tour the park each year. The first one that I would like to note as a very convenient attraction called FREE PARKING. I'm from Philadelphia and free parking where I'm from is the equivalent to a unicorn flying in the sky twice a day. It doesn't exist.

However, aside from free parking at Gettysburg we have this very cool attraction that depicts the third day during the Battle of Gettysburg. We call this feature the Cyclorama painting. This is a 360 degree canvas oil painting that surrounds the room it is placed in. It looks like the painting is 3D the way the illustrations pop out at you but, you can't touch it. I tried.

The room the Cyclorama is in features dimmed lights, narrative voices to depict what is in front of visitors, and sound/light effects (for the big bad cannons). During the late 1800s, the Cyclorama style of painting was very popular in the U.S. and Europe. However they lost popularity with the rising of motion pictures which we use today in modern society. None the less, it is still very cool to see these type of paintings.