Seven Centuries of Nuremberg Panoramas

This two-page view of Nuremberg, titled NVREMBERGA, occupies a prominent place in the Nuremberg Chronicle, an illustrated description of world history published in 1493. This is the first-ever printed view of Nuremberg, and also the best known. All the most important buildings are on view here, including the Castle, the parish churches, and the gate towers, even though not all of them would have actually been visible from the chosen vantage point. To get them into the picture, the eastern side of the city, with the inlet of the Pegnitz River and the Laufertor gate, has been bent a bit toward the viewer.

This unsigned sheet was probably commissioned by Johann Wilhelm Kress. It shows the village of Neunhof in the agricultural region known as Knoblauchsland – "Garlic Country" – with its farmhouses and barns, as well as the Kress family mansion, built around 1479.

Baroque portrayals of the panorama

In this engraving by Nicolaus Visscher, Albrecht Dürer is enthroned like a god above his home town, a symbol of both the most famed period of the city's history and the Baroque era's pan-European veneration of Dürer. Visscher, who had never been to Nuremberg himself, forgoes topographical accuracy for the sake of an ideal view. The finished copperplate print, more than two meters wide, has been assembled from four large plates. City vistas of this size are rare, and were hung on the wall like paintings.

This panoramic view portrays everyday life in the Baroque era in rich detail. Firewood is stacked between the Spital buildings; textiles are spread on the bank of the Pegnitz to bleach. At the center, the town watch escorts a prisoner to the "Männereisen" dungeon tower.

Nuremberg engraver Johann Adam Delsenbach was famed most of all for his many views of the Imperial City. His three-part masterpiece, the "Nürnberger Prospekte," conveys a sense of 18th-century Nuremberg with numerous views of the city's squares and buildings. Delsenbach also enlivened most of his engravings with diverse sprightly figures – in this image, for example, an aristocratic-looking gentleman relieving himself against a tree.

A Biedermeier enthusiasm for panoramas

This view is from a series of more than 20 watercolors in which painter, draftsman and engraver Carl Kaeppel documented Nuremberg's enclosing walls. It is a good example of the work of an artist who dealt primarily with highly detailed views of Nuremberg and the "Franconian Switzerland" region north-northeast of the city. This is a view from the west toward the city across the Deutschherrenwiese fields – almost the same view that the painter of the Krell Altarpiece chose when portraying the first recorded general vista of Nuremberg in 1483.

Panoramas of Nuremberg in the early industrialization age

In 1841, the Royal Rail Construction Commission was founded in Nuremberg to organize a rail line from Lindau to Hof by way of Augsburg and Nuremberg. The area outside the Frauentor gate was chosen as the site for the Nuremberg station. To document its previous appearance, artist Georg Christoph Wilder was commissioned to produce three large views of the region. This one looks southwest from the Frauentor tower; the former military outworks left over from the Thirty Years' War are still clearly identifiable.

The left part of a 360-degree view of Nuremberg – probably the first to be made with the aid of a camera obscura. The Sebalder Altstadt is in the center. Here, outside the Neutor gate, was where the town's government would really have preferred to see the new railroad station built. But the Bavarian state railway decided for a location outside the Frauentor gate, thus triggering an immense appreciation of value in the Lorenzer Altstadt. From 1846 onward, the Lorenzer Königstrasse thus became the most significant transportation and business artery on this side of the Pegnitz.

Both parts combined as an interactive panorama

Ferdinand Schmidt can be considered Nuremberg's most significant visual chronicler from the second half of the 19th century. Perhaps his most impressive pictures are the three 360-degree views from the Spittlertor tower, showing both the Old Town and the southwestern suburbs. Each taken about two decades apart, they document the city's explosive growth over half a century, and allow a clear and detailed recognition of the changes in architecture and urban planning.

The photographs from 1865, 1885 and 1905 as interactive panoramas

In 1882, Heinrich Josef Wenglein founded the Nadelwaren-Fabrik H. Wenglein in Nuremberg – a "needle goods factory." As a newcomer, he chose an industry with a tradition – Nuremberg was one of the oldest production centers for needles and pins, going back to the 14th century. And Wenglein's choice of his company name also reflects his connections to the city. The foreground of this picture includes an angled view of the Norica needle works on Glockenhofstrasse – a location clearly identifiable from the city view in the background.

Guidelines for rebuilding had already been set in the 1950s: within the city walls the Old Town was to be reconstructed; but outside, construction would follow modern standards. This 360-degree view embraces a panorama ranging from what is known as the "Schuldturm" to the Imperial Castle, and at its center is Hans-Sachs-Platz with the Heilig-Geist-Spital, still under construction. For architect Friedrich Neubauer, the view of life at the construction site was the most significant priority. He repeatedly portrayed scenes with a construction crane rising above everything.

Bruno Weiss shot his panoramic series from the Plärrer area shortly before the turn of the millennium. Considering how severely it was devastated in World War II, the Old Town seems amazingly unchanged. We owe this illusion of an almost "preserved" cityscape to the reconstruction standards for adhering to historic street layouts and building heights. Outside the city walls, only the Opera House and the building for the former "KaLi" movie house seem to have survived from before. The rest of the buildings are in the style of the 1950s to 1990s. Above this sea of buildings rises the symbol of the German "Economic Miracle" – the Plärrer high-rise built in 1952-53.

The full 360-degree view from 1999 as an interactive panorama

In this frontal view of Nuremberg's Old Town, De la Riestra gives particularly effective expression to the self-contained quality of the cityscape and its medieval flavor. The gently curving foreground outline that encloses the Old Town incorporates the long segment of the city walls from the Neutor tower to the Spittlertor tower. Various buildings and sightseeing destinations can be recognized among the roof lines. The straight-line silhouette in the background is defined by the city's towers.