A menagerie is a collection of captive animals, frequently exotic, kept for display, or the place where such a collection is kept, a precursor to the modern zoo or zoological garden. The term was first used in 17th-century France, referring to the management of household or domestic stock. Later, it came to be used primarily in reference to aristocratic or royal animal collections. The French-language Methodical Encyclopaedia of 1782 defines a menagerie as an "establishment of luxury and curiosity". Later on, the term referred also to travelling animal collections that exhibited wild animals at fairs across Europe and the Americas.
Aristocratic menageries
A menagerie was mostly connected with an aristocratic or royal court and was situated within a garden or park of a palace. These aristocrats wanted to illustrate their power and wealth by displaying exotic animals which were uncommon, difficult to acquire, and expensive to maintain in a living and active state. The aristocratic menageries are distinguished from the later zoological garden (zoos) since they were founded and owned by aristocrats whose intentions were not primarily of scientific and educational interest.
Medieval period and Renaissance During the Middle Ages, several sovereigns across Europe maintained menageries at their royal courts. An early example is that of the Emperor Charlemagne in the 8th century. His three menageries, at Aachen, Nijmegen and Ingelheim, located in present-day Netherlands and Germany, housed the first elephants seen in Europe since the Roman Empire, along with monkeys, lions, bears, camels, falcons, and many exotic birds. Charlemagne received exotic animals for his collection as gifts from rulers of Africa and Asia. In 797, the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid, presented Charlemagne with an Asian elephant named Abul-Abbas. The elephant arrived on July 1, 802 to the Emperor's residence in Aachen. He died in June 810. William the Conqueror had a small royal menagerie. At his manor, Woodstock, he began a collection of exotic animals. Around the year 1100 his son, Henry I, enclosed Woodstock and enlarged the collection. At the beginning of the 12th century, Henry I of England is known to have kept a collection of animals at his palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, reportedly including lions, leopards, lynxes, camels, owls, and a porcupine. The most prominent animal collection in medieval England was the Tower Menagerie in London that began as early as 1204. It was established by King John, who reigned in England from 1199 to 1216 and is known to have held lions and bears. Henry III received a wedding gift in 1235 of three leopards from Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. The most spectacular arrivals in the early years were a white bear and an elephant, gifts from the kings of Norway and France in 1251 and in 1254 respectively. In 1264, the animals were moved to the Bulwark, which was renamed the Lion Tower, near the main western entrance of the Tower. This building was constituted by rows of cages with arched entrances, enclosed behind grilles. They were set in two storeys, and it appears that the animals used the upper cages during the day and were moved to the lower storey at night. The menagerie was opened to the public during the reign of Elizabeth I in the 16th century. During the 18th century, the price of admission was three half-pence, or the supply of a cat or dog to be fed to the lions. Animals recorded here at the end of the 18th century included lions, tigers, hyenas, and bears. Most of the animals were transferred in 1831 to the newly opened London Zoo at Regent's Park, which did not receive all the animals but rather shared them with Dublin Zoo. The Tower Menagerie was finally closed in 1835, on the orders of the Duke of Wellington. The Tower Menagerie in London can be considered to have been the royal menagerie of England for six centuries. In the first half of the thirteenth century, Emperor Frederick II had three permanent menageries in Italy, at Melfi in Basilicata, at Lucera in Apulia and at Palermo in Sicily. In 1235, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II established at his court in southern Italy the "first great menagerie" in western Europe. An elephant, a white bear, a giraffe, a leopard, hyenas, lions, cheetahs, camels, and monkeys were all exhibited; but the emperor was particularly interested in birds, and studied them sufficiently to write a number of authoritative books on them. In the beginning of the 15th century, a royal menagerie was established in the Royal Palace of Lisbon, located nearby the Castle of Saint George. Following the conquest of Ceuta in 1415, King John I of Portugal brought back to Lisbon two Barbary lions, and they were installed in a large room inside his Palace in the Citadel of Lisbon. This area of the palace came to be known as Casa dos Leões (the "Lions' House"); today the area is occupied by a famed restaurant with the same name. Later that century, German humanist Hieronymus Münzer spent five days in Lisbon in 1494, and learned about the lions, claiming to be the most beautiful wild beasts he had ever seen. Later on, the ménagerie of King Manuel I (1495-1521), inside the Ribeira Palace, in downtown Lisbon, was appreciated in Europe due to its huge elephants that the king ordered to be brought from India. One of his elephants, Hanno, as well as a rhinoceros depicted by Dürer were famous gifts to Pope Leo X. However, the rhinoceros drowned as a result of a shipwreck suffered during the transport trip to Italy. By the end of the 15th century, the aristocracy of Renaissance Italy began to collect exotic animals at their residences on the outskirts of the cities. The role played by animals within the gardens of Italian villas expanded at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, and one prominent example was the Villa Borghese built 1608–1628 in Rome.
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