The building that housed the Siege of Sevastopol panorama burns after a drone strike in the early hours of June 10, which the Crimean city's Russian-occupation authorities blamed on Kyiv.Images showing charred and water-logged sections of the panorama, one of Crimea's most famous artworks, appear to confirm it was severely damaged by the strike.
This fragment of the painting, filmed after its removal from the smoldering museum, matches a section of the panorama that has been preserved in online archives.
A detail of the Siege of Sevastopol panorama photographed in 2015.The artwork, which depicts an 1855 battle during the Crimean War, is 14 meters high and stretched 115 meters around the interior of its purpose-built exhibition hall.
Visitors being shown the panorama in Sevastopol in August 2015.The artwork was first painted in the early 1900s by the Russian-French artist Franz Roubaud, but the original was largely destroyed during the Nazi-led invasion of the Soviet Union. Its surviving remnants were evacuated by sea from Sevastopol in 1942 and stored at an unspecified location.
A detail of the panorama, which combined models and painting, photographed in August 2015.A three-dimensional recreation of Roubaud's artwork was made in the 1950s and installed in the circular exhibition hall. It is this replica that was damaged in the June 10 strike.
