As historicist styles spread, European architecture began showing the tendency to employ decorative and structural elements drawn from the art and architecture of the East. In the period between the English expansion in India during the first half of the 18th century and the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, what had initially been idle curiosity about a different world turned into marked interest, becoming a style, and a trend in taste, that took off in a variety of different directions, from chinoiserie to the passion for Egyptian art, from the stylistic motifs of India to those of Arabian art.

The importation of such precious objects as lacquerware and porcelain during the early 18th century stimulated interest in Chinese art, but only in terms of its decorative qualities. Art from the Far East was filtered through Western taste and applied superficially to European models. It was initially expressed in the production of objects inspired by Oriental motifs, but then came the thoroughly rococo creation of small ‘Chinese’ arrangements in which the furnishings, tableware, and wall decorations created highly refined settings; it finally led to the almost literal replication of buildings, such as the Pagoda in London’s Kew Gardens or the Tea Pavilion of the park of Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam. This taste began to decline around 1770 but continued in further imitations during later years, such as Marvuglia’s Chinese Palace at Palermo of 1799. At the same time, following the military and scientific expeditions to Egypt in 1769 and the Napoleonic campaign of 1798, the Egyptian style spread throughout Europe; once again, the initial taste for furnishings grew to take on a monumental scale, involving urban creations, with gardens strewn with pillars and obelisks and cemetery tombs shaped like pyramids.

European city squares filled more and more with souvenirs from the Orient, much like triumphal displays of conquests made in far-off exotic lands, often with eclectic styles generated by the confusion of archaeological references. Thus came into being those heterogeneous constructions in which Asian elements – the Royal Pavilion of Brighton – are joined to those neo – classical.