The ‘World’s Biggest’ War Diorama, A State-Funded Exhibition Recreates The Battlefields Of WWII In Brutal Detail
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A scene showing one of the first trench battles is prepared by a scenery worker for the opening of the 3D Panorama exhibition “Memory talks. The road through war” in the former Sevcabel port in St. Petersburg, Russia, 16 September 2019. Various 3D dioramas – containing genuine wartime items such as aircraft, tanks and artillery in original size – allow visitors to walk through scenes from the beginning to the end of WWII without any museum barriers.
The famous moment Red Army soldiers were photographed on the roof of Germany’s Reichstag, recreated in the exhibition. In Russia, World War II remains a sacred memory. An estimated 22-28 million people — some 14 percent of the population of the Soviet Union — died during World War II.
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Nazi troops inside a Soviet village. The exhibition is designed to be walked through, and none of the exhibits will be roped off from visitors.
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Refugees haul their belongings past a wrecked Soviet tank. These are some of the scenes from an exhibition recreating the battlefields of World War II, known in Russia as The Great Patriotic War.
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A scene from the street battles of Stalingrad. Russia’s representation of the Second World War was criticized in September after a Kremlin-funded exhibition: 75 Years Of The Liberation Of Eastern Europe From Nazism, was held in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “Without ignoring the contribution of the U.S.S.R. to the defeat of Nazism in Europe, we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that the bayonets of the Soviet Army brought the people of Eastern Europe half a century of repression.”
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Soviet and Nazi soldiers locked in a fight to the death in a trench.
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An artist puts the finishing touches on a German tank. The exhibition — Memory Speaks: The Road Through War, will open on September 19 and run until spring 2020.
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An artist puts the finishing touches on a German tank. The exhibition — Memory Speaks: The Road Through War, will open on September 19 and run until spring 2020.
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Red Army soldiers paddle artillery across a waterway. The exhibition will reportedly be the largest of its kind in the world.
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A Nazi tank dusted with the rubble of battle. Many of the props used in the exhibition are authentic WWII-era weapons.
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Horses gasp their way across the Dnieper River as Red Army soldiers are blasted from their boat.
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A refugee and her dog walk past a destroyed tank. The exhibition is largely aimed at schoolchildren, who will be able to view the exhibition for free.
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