Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo by Ionic pilasters, and crowned with parapet with a frieze of palmettes. The entrance porch has two pairs of Tuscan columns supporting a triangular pediment. The rotunda houses an oil-on-canvas painting completed by French artist Louis Dumoulin in 1912, with 14 canvas panels sewn together to create a cylinder approximately in circumference and high. It is lit from above by a ring of glazing around the edge of the conical roof and is viewed from a high platform at the centre of the rotunda. The painting depicts several different episodes from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, concentrating on charges
Battle of Waterloo and drive it back towards the sea. The historian Andrew Roberts notes that "It is a curious fact about the Battle of Waterloo that no one is absolutely certain when it actually began". Wellington recorded in his dispatches that at "about ten o'clock [Napoleon] commenced a furious attack upon our post at Hougoumont". Other sources state that the attack began around 11:30. The house and its immediate environs were defended by four light companies of Guards, and the wood and park by Hanoverian "Jäger" and the 1/2nd Nassau. The initial attack by Bauduin's brigade emptied the wood and park, but