Throughout history, royalty has had collections of "oddities". These would range from exotic stones to alleged mythical creatures. As the Age of Enlightenment spread through Europe, the interest for science rose. An increasing amount of aristocrats began to collect their own cabinets of curiosities.
Some collections were vast and counted several hundreds of bizarre items while others were rather modest. Today, they provide us with an interesting insight into both the personality of the owner and the age in which he lived.
Due to the restricted amount of space available at Versailles, anyone who had a substantial collection was obliged to store it elsewhere - usually in their country estates.
These were some of the courtiers who built up their own cabinets of curiosities:
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