To enter the image: a desire that has accompanied mankind since the dawn of time, lost in the mists of myth. A desire that over the centuries every visual culture has tried to realise with the means available from time to time. And which today virtual reality technologies promise to satisfy: the image becomes an immersive environment, enveloping us at 360 degrees, a flesh and blood presence. The frames that confined it to a world apart are gone. Even the medium in which it is realised seems to become transparent. Once the passage between the real world and the iconic world is open, we must expect a two-way passage: we enter the world of the image, but the image floods into our world. Desire is accompanied by fear of this overflow. This book explores that double movement, and reconstructs the history of that desire-fear, of the fantasies it has triggered and of the strategies devised to correspond to it: from the proto-immersive Narcissus to VR helmets, via trompe-l'œil and living sculptures, mirrors and illusionistic architecture, panoramas and phantasmagorias, art-environments and 3D cinema. As we stand on the threshold that both separates and joins these two worlds, we are fascinated by them and appreciate the risk.