Bourbaki Panorama

The Bourbaki Panorama is a circular panoramic painting depicting the internment of the French Armée de l'Est in neutral Switzerland at the end of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War. The army, led by General Charles-Denis Bourbaki, had been defeated in the field while attempting to raise the Siege of Belfort and fled to Switzerland in the aftermath. The Swiss admitted the French soldiers, and local villagers and the Swiss Red Cross provided aid.

In 1876, the Belgium Panorama Society commissioned Swiss artist Édouard Castres, who had accompanied the Armée de l'Est as a medical volunteer, to produce a panorama for display in Switzerland as a tourist attraction. Castres and a team of ten artists produced a circular painting, measuring 115 metres in length, to be viewed from the centre.