A museum built around the cyclorama painting Battle of Racławice, made under the direction of Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak, a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław.
Panorama of the Battle of Racławice is a Wrocław museum built around a single exhibit: a huge cyclorama painting depicting the Battle of Racławice. Visitors view the painting from a central viewing platform, surrounded by the artwork on all sides.
The painting was made in 1893-1894 for the hundredth anniversary of the Kościuszko Uprising, commissioned by the city council of Lwów, intended for the General National Exhibition in Lwów in 1894. The idea for the project came from Jan Styka, who invited Wojciech Kossak to collaborate. A team of painters also helped with the work: Ludwig Boller, Tadeusz Popiel, Zygmunt Rozwadowski, Teodor Axentowicz, Michał Sozański, Włodzimierz Tetmajer and Wincenty Wodzinowski. The painting shows the victory of the insurgent forces under Tadeusz Kościuszko's command over Russian troops led by Alexander Tormasov in the battle of 4 April 1794.
The painting is 15 metres high and 114 metres long, giving an area of about 1,800 square metres. It was painted on sailcloth imported from Belgium, stitched together from 14 strips of 15 metres each. Priming the canvas alone used 750 kilograms of paint.
The first rotunda in which the panorama was shown stood in Lwów, designed by Ludwik Baldwin-Ramułt, and opened on 5 June 1894. The painting was exhibited in the city's Stryjski Park, and in 1896 it was shown in Budapest, where it was seen by 800,000 people. On 9 April 1944 the painting was damaged during bombing and hidden in a Bernardine monastery in Lwów. It was brought to Wrocław in 1946, after which it lay for two years in a railway warehouse in Brochów, then spent over a decade in the collection of what was then the State Museum. A team of 25 conservators worked on restoring the painting over several years.
The building in which the painting can be seen today was designed by Ewa and Marek Dziekoński. It was built between 1961 and 1985 and opened to visitors on 14 June 1985. In 1991 the rotunda was entered on the heritage register. The shape of the building, a hyperboloid of revolution, combined with the three-dimensional scenery (sztafaż) set up in front of the painting, is meant to blur the boundary between the artwork and the visitor standing on the platform. From August 2020 to 27 July 2021 the painting itself underwent restoration and renovation.
Panorama of the Battle of Racławice is a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław. A million visitors had seen the painting by August 1987, five million by July 1998, and six million by September 2004. It is one of four 19th-century panoramas painted under the direction of Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak, alongside the Transylvanian Panorama, Golgotha, and the Martyrdom of Christians in Nero's Circus.
Right next to the Panorama lies Juliusz Słowacki Park. Also close by are the Museum of Architecture and the Museum Footbridge crossing the Oder.
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