Haus 201: asisi Panometer

In Leipzig, a round former gasometer has become a home for pictures too big for any gallery wall. Haus 201: asisi Panometer is the museum inside it. Its whole programme rests on the 360-degree panoramas of Yadegar Asisi, made on a scale you step into. You stand in the middle, and the picture surrounds you on all sides.

The exhibitions change regularly, moving between history, nature and culture, each with a companion display on its theme and its making. More than two hundred works from over thirty years of his career trace how a picture of this scale comes together. A visitor platform some fifteen metres up gives you the panorama from above, a view that changes the work completely. Soundscapes and other effects pull you deeper in, so the visit feels more like entering a scene than looking at one. Families have their own ways in: children's tours, puzzle rallies and family tours keep younger visitors busy. Since everything happens indoors, it is also a good bet for a rainy day.

One of the panoramas is devoted to Monet's cathedral in Rouen. It sets you down in 1890, the cathedral and the era's everyday life running around the full circle of the wall. That is the trick the old gasometer makes possible: only a round, tall room can hold an entire city at once.