A $35,800,000 project spiffed up the painting, built it new quarters at the Atlanta History Center, and enabled construction of exhibits on its history and context.

"The history and the art and the architecture and the engineering and the construction--all that fits together," says Gordon Jones a military historian who also aided restoration of the 132-year old, 49-foot tall, 10,000 pound painting, one of just two cycloramas left in the United States.

Jones says the "new" experience takes you back to the way the huge painting was originally intended to be displayed. With it now fully suspended--impossible in the smaller space at Grant Park--the horizon is now at eye level, creating the illusion of depth that hasn't been fully on display in a century. And the rotating platform is replaced with a fixed structure from which the painting surrounds you, also as originally intended.

LED lights now illuminate the "artifact", as preservationists call it--many decades after the Cyclorama was one of the first attractions of its kind to use electric lighting.

As for the delicacy of promoting a Confederacy-related attraction in these sensitive times, Jones says, "We cannot address difficult issues in history by ignoring them. We can only address them by talking about them honestly, and talking about them from all different perspectives".

New exhibits discuss how the Cyclorama has been interpreted--and misinterpreted--to audiences, over the decades, down to display of scripts used by tour guides in past decades.

"This artifact allows us to have those conversations, because so many of those interpretations have been laid on this painting over the years," Jones says.

The Center encourages advanced tickets. About 100 walk-up tickets are available daily, beginning at 10:00 AM.