Enthusiastic young people, professional skills, equipment and ambition was all that was required to break two world records in Buda this summer. The group called 360world, composed of information specialists, photographers, architectural designers, graphic designers, cinematographers and editors applied to the local government of Budapest's 12^th district for permission to go up onto the 527-metre-high Erzsébet viewing tower on János Hill in order to make their 360-degree cyclorama from there.  

They did not try to make a secret of their objective to break two world records: on the one hand to create the world's biggest cyclorama and on the other hand to take a picture with the biggest resolution yet achieved - which anybody would afterwards be able to see online. The management of the 12^th district embraced the idea, since September will mark the 100^th anniversary of the Erzsébet viewing tower and it will form part of a series of celebrations that the local government is in any case preparing.  

360world already has extensive experience in the area of high resolution photography. This includes photographs they took at the beginning of 2010 of paintings by Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka  and József Rippl-Rónai  in the Hungarian National Gallery, which they uploaded in gigapixel resolution. Ten thousand people viewed the online images within a space of seven weeks and the major success of this event prompted the group to consider a professional step forward and to consider new challenges. Thus the idea arose to take their tools and equipment - including a robot produced exclusively for them in Germany - to the highest point in Budapest, and from there to make the biggest cyclorama in the world with the highest resolution yet achieved.

The right weather was needed to take the photographs, and the shoot finally commenced at the end of May. They took approximately 4,500 24-megapixel pictures within about three hours. However, two months of post-production work was necessary to put together this material and make a 360-degree cyclorama of Budapest. The 71-billion pixel cyclorama - which is expected to earn a place in the Guinness Book of Records - is bigger than the cycloramas made of Vienna, Dresden or Rio de Janeiro and creates the effect of looking through a pair of giant binoculars bringing even the tiniest details into focus. The photo can also be viewed online on any average computer.

By printing the photographs taken, a 130-metre-long and 45-metre-high giant poster would be produced in which four12-storey blocks of flats could be wrapped up. Although such a massive poster was not made, the development of a far "smaller" giant poster of 15 by 1.5 metres took six hours. Of course it will be also possible to view the record-breaking cyclorama on a touch screen computer at the celebrations. And to make matters more exciting participants will have the chance to win a prize if they can find a caption reading "100-year anniversary of the Erzsébet viewing tower" (on the roof of one of the houses in the picture).