The paradigm - image-based localization using panoramic images - is elaborated. Panoramic images provide complete views of an environment and their information content does not change if a panoramic camera is rotated. The “zero phase representation” of cylindrical panoramic images, an example of a rotation invariant representation, is constructed for the class of images which have non-zero first harmonic in column direction. It is an invariant and fully discriminative representation. The zero phase representation is demonstrated by an experiment with real data and it is shown that the alternative autocorrelation representation is outperformed.