THE VISUAL PANORAMA OF OLD LWÓW BY JANUSZ WITWICKI IN 1936-1939 (Sprawa panoramy plastycznej dawnego Lwowa Janusza Witwickiego w latach 1936-1939)

The purpose of the Visual Arts Panorama of Old Lwów (Lvov, Lviv), designed and realised in about 1932 by engineer Janusz Witwicki, was to recreate on a 1:200 scale a view of historical Lwów from 1772. Since the reconstruction was to be financed by the city of Lwów, at the beginning of 1937 the Town Board convened a Committee of Experts composed of local historians, historians of art and a single architect, to assess of Witwicki's heretofore work. The experts' opinions varied greatly: Prof. Mieczyslaw Gebarowicz and Dr. Tadeusz Mankowski denied the reconstruction any scientific merits, while others, including Dr. Zbigniew Hornung and Prof. Teofil Emil Modelski, represented a diametrically different stand. This divergence to a large degree influenced the attitude of the Town Board, which in 1938-1939 decided not to finance the complete Panorama, and offered its author a subvention of 10 000 zlotys. Consequently, the Panorama remained unfinished up to the outbreak of the war in September 1939.