Meeting Waterloo head-on

Waterloo: It's hard to believe anyone would choose the crackle of distant cannon fire and a very dated 360-degree wall painting over in-your-face kinetic effects of movies and theme parks.

But annually more than 200,000 people visit the Waterloo Panorama for the thrill of seeing a vast, dilapidated, century-old painting showing Napoleon's last stand.

Carole Fonteneau of St Malo, France, emerged from the place recently fairly excited.

"It's quite real with sounds," she said.

"My little boy is impressed, too.

"But it's still hard to feel how it was to be in such a battle."

A visit to Waterloo, where Napoleon was decisively defeated by the Duke of Wellington in June 1815, is a march back in time in more than one way.

Its panorama shows not only Napoleon's final adieu but, in the era of the internet, IMAX movies and Wii, is an enduring and endearing icon of old-fashioned art and entertainment.

Panorama insiders and painters - yes, they still paint those things! - say the vast circular canvases offer a rare, unrushed experience that beats the helter-skelter of multimedia entertainment.

"The timing of all those games is hectic.

"I think people have a longing for non-hectic things, too," says Ernst Storm, president of the nonprofit International Panorama Council.

With panoramas, he adds, "you have the time to absorb the experience and to immerse it into your own timetable".

Sanford Wurmfeld, an art professor at New York City's Hunter College, has painted two abstract panoramas - Cyclorama 2000 and E-Cyclorama - which have been displayed in both Europe and the United States.

He says it is the absence of the digital sound and fury that makes wall paintings so enjoyable.

Visitors do hear muffled cannon and gunfire in the background at the Waterloo panorama, but it's very low-tech compared with what you could experience on any home computer today.

"It is exactly in contrast to the internet, video, and other `hot media' that I think my panoramas take on their greatest function," he said.

"The new media tends to encourage passive viewing.

"I see painting as the ultimate example of the static medium, which requires the most active "participation by the viewer to experience it fully."

The panorama of the Battle of Waterloo is 110m long and 12m high.