To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Murten (Morat, canton of Fribourg) on June 22, 1476, EPFL and its partners are launching a website that offers the general public an immersive experience of its panorama. A platform makes primary sources available to scientists and allows them to participate collaboratively.
The Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+) at EPFL has digitalized the Panorama of the Battle of Murten - a previously inaccessible 19th-century national treasure. The painting is restaged as an augmented 1.6-trillion-pixel digital twin and can be now experienced online as well as in a series of fully interactive exhibitions in Swiss museums and other institutions worldwide.
The website launches on 22 June 2025, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Murten, fought in 1476. It offers access to the largest image of a physical object ever created at ultra-high resolution and provides two modes of interaction:
- The Scholarly Platform, enabled by semantic web technologies and IIIF manifest (International Image Interoperability Framework) - a research-focused interpretation database that provides access to primary sources with scholarly annotations, and future automatic data extraction. Open to scholars and interested members of the public to explore evidence-based research and to contribute collaboratively.
- The Terapixel Panorama, enriched with volumetric videos, 3D objects, motion capture, and a dynamic soundscape. This public-facing, non-specialist interface evolves into multimodal storytelling that enables visitors to follow the guided tours and/or navigate, observe, and interact with the digital twin on their own, via self-guided exploration.
Accessibility and inclusion are central. Hence, the interface encompasses trilingual navigation (English, French and German) and an audio description mode, ensuring meaningful engagement for visitors with visual impairments.
Complementing the online digital experience, a series of exhibitions staged from August 2025 to May 2027 at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Museum Murten, Bernisches Historisches Museum, and Château de Grandson, as well as other international venues, invite the visitors to a multisensory experience of the colossal 19th-century panoramic painting.
The initiative reintroduces the Panorama of the Battle of Murten to global audiences, pioneers new ways of seeing, perceiving, and interacting with its augmented digital twin, and sparks a new conversation about modern museology, accessibility, cultural heritage, and historical interpretation.
The Terapixel Panorama Project was awarded an Optimus Agora Prize in 2024.
