Panorama of Berlin

This is a detail from a Panorama of Berlin painted by Eduard Gärtner (or Gaertner) at a time when the prosperous Bierdermeier city was booming. The eminent looking gentleman with grey hair gesturing from the roof of the Friedrichswerder Church is none other than Alexander von Humboldt (whose writings I discussed here ten years ago). The panorama's six panels can be seen in the Schloss Charlotteberg, and I will quote here their wall description:

With its joy in detail, it conveys to us a lively notion of life in the city as it was in 1834. The roof of the church, completed in 1831, afforded an excellent standpoint for a panoramic view to Berlin's residential and representational buildings. The panorama assumes this gaze and shows the city not only as a royal residence, but also as a center of culture and science. Standing inside this angular panorama, viewers are drawn into the goings-on as if they were part of the group of visitors atop the church. Renowned personages have gathered together here; among them, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt and even the artist himself. Even before the paintings were finished, Gaertner was able to convince Frederick William Ill to purchase them. Beginning in 1836, they were on display at Charlottenburg Palace.

Although Schinkel's Neo-Gothic church is well located for a good central view of Berlin, its metal roof (unnoticeable from the ground) is quite a dominant feature in the paintings. One of the towers might have been a better bet, but perhaps they were a bit less accessible. Gärtner was clearly interested in portraying a place that had already become popular with visitors, the nineteenth century equivalent of tourists who ascend the Fernsehturm TV Tower or look out from the Reichstag's glass roof. The roof's expanse of grey metal is enlivened by a crawling child, adding a touch of what film classifiers might call 'mild peril'. Gärtner had a hut on the roof which he worked from and made rapid progress, despite noting in his diary that he was frequently interrupted by visitors.  

Gärtner's view of Berlin covers 360 degrees but is unlike the large-scale panoramas I've written about here before (Thun, Scheveningen) in being painted on a set of flat sheets and designed to be enjoyed like a traditional landscape painting, rather than an entertaining spectacle. As Stephen Oettermann says in his history of the panorama: 

A round painting would have required a separate building, or at the very least a separate room, where the owner would have to go to look at his picture. Constructing such a room would certainly have caused the actual buyer, King Frederick William III, no financial difficulties, but it would have run totally counter to his habits in approaching works of art. An individual purchaser of paintings tends to want to decorate his walls with them, not to acquire information about a particular locale. Gärtner's views of Berlin represent an anomaly in the history of panorama painting that illustrates the vast difference between true panoramas and their audience on the one hand and traditional paintings and their owners-viewers on the other.