So now we're actually walking under the diorama and we're going to come up to an escalator.

The biggest painting in Atlanta is 49 feet tall, longer than a football field and weighs

10,000 pounds.

But it isn't just a painting, it is an immersive experience because when you pop up at the top

of that escalator, onto the viewing platform.

Oh man, voila, here's your painting, now you're in the middle of the scene.

Suddenly you're not in a museum.

You are a general looking out over a battle and it's raging all around you, 360 degrees.

Down below, men with muskets are charging forward in a ragged mass.

Soldiers duck behind cotton bales, reloading their rifles, gunpowder clouds, pop in the

air and men lie in agony on the ground, limbs twisted, faces distorted.

And then off in the distance, the horizon, a haze of blue sky and trees.

The battle here may be frozen in time, but the battle over the painting itself has been

going on for nearly 150 years.

It involves a scheming promoter who changed the painting to fit his own version of history.

The cast have gone with the win, Atlanta's first black mayor and even the voice of Darth

Vader himself.

I'm Dylan Thurus and today on the show in partnership with Discover Atlanta, we are

taking you to the Battle of Atlanta's Cyclorama at the Atlanta History Center.

We'll go there.

This is Gordon Jones, Senior Military Historian at the Atlanta History Center.

This immersive painting he's showing us is a slice of one day, July 22, 1864.

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