Art and culture lovers everywhere should be able to appreciate this: a 360-degree interactive panorama of Prague’s off-limits-to-the-public 868-year-old Strahov Monastery Library. This Hall is home to a 42,000-volume collection of “just about every important book available in central Europe at the end of the 18th century — more or less the sum total of human knowledge at the time.”
Or you can take in the room’s ornate marquetry. Or its heroic statues. Or, arguably its most impressive feature: the massive fresco on the Hall’s ceiling – Franz Anton Maulbertsch’s trompe l’oeil – which depicts “dozens of historical and religious figures, ranging from Noah and Moses to the French encyclopedists” and is meant to represent “the intellectual progress of mankind.”
All that and this interactive panorama allows you to zoom into the spines of every book or examine the intricate details of the historical figures on the Maulbertsch-painted ceiling.
As the Wired article on the process of this panorama’s creation puts it: this web-based panorama “might actually be better than an actual visit.”
