Gettysburg Museum

We decided to do a Segway tour. The tours were sold-out for today so we scheduled a three hour tour for tomorrow. After walking some of the battlefields, we went to the Gettysburg Museum and visitor center and walked through the museum, and saw the movie and the Cyclorama. This was my first Cyclorama! The Cyclorama is a 360 degree painting of Pickets charge and places you in the middle of it all. This is nicely done; there is a narrator and sound effects that help tell the story of this battle.

Cycloramas were a very popular form of entertainment in the late 1800's. These massive oil paintings were displayed in special auditoriums and enhanced with landscaped foregrounds; the result was a three-dimensional effect that surrounded viewers who stood on a central platform, literally placing them in the center of the great historic scene. The Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama is one that has survived.