Wocher Panorama

Tucked inside the Kunstmuseum Thun is one of the strangest and most wonderful things in Switzerland: a 360-degree cylindrical painting of Thun as it looked around 1814. The Wocher Panorama was painted by Marquard Wocher on a canvas seven and a half metres high, and it wraps completely around you when you stand at the viewing platform in the centre of the room. Farmhouses, the castle, the lake, the Alps, people going about their daily business — all painted in meticulous, documentary detail.

What makes it extraordinary is its age: this is the oldest surviving panorama painting anywhere in the world. Every other panorama from this era — there were dozens across Europe — has been destroyed, dismantled, or lost. This one survived because it never left Thun. It is a small masterpiece of an overlooked genre, and most visitors to the town have no idea it exists. Admission is included in the Kunstmuseum ticket.

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A story
The Wocher Panorama is the oldest surviving panorama painting in the world. Completed around 1814 by Marquard Wocher, it is a 7.5-metre-high cylindrical canvas about 38 metres in circumference, showing a 360-degree view of Thun as it appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. Panorama paintings were the IMAX cinemas of their era — immersive spectacles that charged admission. Almost all of the others have been lost; Thun's survives by a combination of good luck and local devotion.