From June 28 to September 10, 2025, the Cinemateca Portuguesa—Museu do Cinema presented The Cosmorama in Lisbon – Virtual Travelling in the 19th Century, an exhibition that invited contemporary audiences to rediscover the Cosmorama – a once-popular visual medium that played a central role in 19th-century visual culture, but is now largely forgotten. The exhibition brought together a physical and a virtual reconstruction of a historical Cosmorama, along with a curated selection of 18th- and 19th-century peeping devices and images. Curated by Victor Flores, Susana S. Martins, and Ana David Mendes, the exhibition was organised by the Early Visual Media Lab (CICANT, Lusófona University) and the Institute of Art History (NOVA FCSH) and it stems from the FCT-funded research project Curiositas – Peeping Before Virtual Reality: A Media Archaeology of Immersion Through VR and the Iberian Cosmoramas, 2022–2026.
Rediscovering a Forgotten Medium
The Cosmorama represents a forgotten chapter in the history of visual media, occupying a transitional space between early peep-shows and modern exhibition culture. Unlike conventional wall displays, Cosmorama images were presented inside an optical dispositif, allowing viewers to peep through magnifying lenses that enhanced perspective and created an immersive illusion of depth.
The earliest known example of a Cosmorama opened in Paris in 1808, created by Abbé Jean-Antoine-Henri-Eugène Gazzera. Itinerant by nature, Cosmoramas travelled across Europe and the Americas as an attraction blending education, science, and entertainment – staying in one city for periods ranging from a few weeks to several years. Their exhibitions were renewed regularly to keep audiences interested. The Cosmorama anticipated the logic of the modern museum: paintings were aligned at eye level, carefully spaced, and accompanied by programmes or catalogues. Though overshadowed in the second half of the 19th century by photography and stereoscopes, Cosmoramas played a vital role in early visual media culture.
The Cinemateca’s exhibition included a physical reconstruction of a Cosmorama, giving today’s visitors a rare chance to look through three distinct lenses and to re-enact the gestures and viewing habits of 19th-century spectators. The reconstruction featured works by Austrian painter Hubert Sattler (1817 – 1904), one of the most important Cosmorama artists. Sattler’s extensive travels across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East inspired cityscapes and landscapes of remarkable detail and topographical accuracy. His works form the largest surviving Cosmorama painting collection – 138 oil paintings preserved at the Salzburg Museum. Among the highlights of the Lisbon exhibition was The Mouth of the Tagus near Lisbon (1868), in which Sattler portrays the city as a vibrant cosmopolitan hub, with ships from across the globe gathering in its harbor.
The Long History of Peeping Through Lenses
The Cosmorama was part of a wider 18th- and 19th-century fascination with optical devices. Earlier instruments, such as zograscopes, were popular in aristocratic educational contexts, praised for their ability to intensify spatial depth in prints and paintings. Portable optical boxes, on the other hand, were operated by itinerant showmen in public squares and fairs, offering audiences similar pleasures – often accompanied by music or narration. Within this media ecology, the Cosmorama distinguished itself as an especially appealing practice for the emerging urban bourgeoisie. It promised both entertainment and instruction, allowing audiences sedentary travels by sight.
The exhibition also showcased examples of successor devices, such as the stereoscope, alongside images of historical significance. Notable works included a watercolor by Roque Gameiro (1905) depicting an itinerant showman in Lisbon’s Terreiro do Paço, and a painting by Nicolas-Louis-Albert Delerive (1801) – one of the earliest Portuguese representations of an optical box. Together, these objects attest to the vitality and persistence of lens-based visual culture in Portugal since the early 19th century.
The promise of a virtual journey
Cosmoramas built their appeal on the promise of effortless travel, offering spectators a kind of proto-virtual tourism. As Domingo Lusardi, the first showmen to bring a Cosmorama to Portugal, advertised in Lisbon in 1834: “The curious enthusiast can, in a minute, transfer from one metropolis to another, travel through fields, cross rivers and seas, pass from one place on the globe to another, return in our days to the most remote centuries”. This description framed the exhibition as an accessible and educational “room journey”, where visitors could experience distant places and eras. The promise of an immersive journey capable of transporting the spectator elsewhere was always central to the imaginary of the Cosmoramas.
In the exhibition, visitors were invited to participate in a virtual reality experience that recreated one of the major Cosmoramas once presented in Lisbon: the Grand Optical Gallery of the Austrian Thomas Karl Andorfer. The experience was divided into two parts. In the first, visitors looked through six lenses organised around the themes most commonly featured in 19th-century Cosmorama exhibitions: Current Affairs, Cities, Monuments, Religion, Crystal Palaces, and Nature. The illusion of optical depth in these virtual lenses was achieved through the use of artificial intelligence depth maps. In the second part, visitors interacted with a virtual map, navigating the routes of some of the principal Cosmorama showmen who toured the Iberian Peninsula, as well as exploring a selection of the press advertisements they produced. This mapping was based on the analysis of more than 700 newspaper advertisements, which document the existence of over 200 Cosmoramas between 1830 and 1870. The second part also featured a window overlooking Lisbon’s Praça do Município, where one could see the arrival of the Portuguese royal family – a recreation of a real visit to Andorfer’s Cosmorama in 1842.
For further travels
The exhibition was accompanied by more than fifteen guided tours, which offered visitors a chance to explore the Cosmorama’s history in greater depth with expert mediation. The programme also included the launch of Cosmorama. The Forgotten Medium, edited by Victor Flores and Susana S. Martins, and presented at the Cinemateca Portuguesa—Museu do Cinema on 6 September 2025. Published in separate Portuguese and English editions, this volume explores the images, itinerant showmen, routes, and audiences of this forgotten medium. The book complements the exhibition while also opening new perspectives by presenting significant and original contributions to research on the history of the Cosmorama.