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. Versailles and its legacy During the seventeenth century, exotic birds and small animals provided diverting ornaments for the court of France; lions and other large animals were kept primarily to be brought out for staged fights. The collecting grew and attained more permanent lodgings in the 1660s, when Louis XIV constructed two new menageries: one at Vincennes, next to a palace on the eastern edge of Paris, and a more elaborate one, which became a model for menageries throughout Europe, at Versailles, the site of a royal hunting lodge two hours (by carriage) west of Paris. Around 1661, he had a menagerie of "ferocious" beasts built at Vincennes for the organization of fights. Surrounding a rectangular courtyard, a two-storey building with balconies allowed spectators to view the scene. The animals were housed on the ground floor in cells bordering the courtyard, with small yards on the outside where they could take a bit of exercise. At Vincennes, lions, tigers, and leopards, as well as polecat, minks and weasels were kept in cages around an amphitheater where the king could entertain courtiers and visiting dignitaries with bloody battles. In 1682, for instance, the ambassador of Persia enjoyed the spectacle of a fight to the death between a royal tiger and an