This painting is 12 feet high and 165 feet (about 50 meters) long—and fills a circular room that you can walk into! In the 1800s when this panorama painting was first shown in New York City, visitors could walk into a darkened room with hidden skylights and stand on a platform to view the scene of King Louis XIV's famous Palace of Versailles in France. In the middle of the gardens and the cast of characters populating the scene, the artist John Vanderlyn had a bit of fun and showed himself pointing out two historical figures, Czar Alexander I of Russia and King Frederick William II of Prussia.

Panorama paintings were a type of amusement in the 1800s—kind of like watching a movie today—and let viewers experience faraway places.