Passage des Panoramas

The Passage des Panoramas opened in eighteen hundred as the very first covered shopping arcade in Paris. It was built on the site of a grand town mansion that once belonged to the Duke of Luxembourg. The passage takes its name from two massive circular buildings that stood at its entrance, where visitors paid to see immersive, three hundred and sixty degree painted canvases of world cities like Rome and Jerusalem. These panoramas were a business venture launched by Robert Fulton, the famous American inventor who came to Paris to pitch his designs for submarines and steamboats to Napoleon. When Napoleon rejected his naval proposals, Fulton relied on these rotating exhibits to fund his stay before eventually moving to London.