Besides the fascination with their exotic visitors, the Europeans were amazed by the bouncing rubber balls.

Constantinople was the most cosmopolitan city in the world, and its inhabitants were long accustomed to exotic visitors.

As was becoming standard practice in this year of exotic visitors, someone from the Foreign Office had sent along helpful etiquette tickets.

Because it is on the Gulf Stream, it also occasionally gets exotic visitors.

But Turkish missions to any part of Europe remained rare and exotic visitors.

The newspapers soon started publishing details of the exotic visitors and they became celebrities.

It's not every week we get so many exotic visitors, so here are some of the best in pictures.

The bookseller sighed and shut the door behind the exotic visitor.

My other truly exotic visitor had a black and white zebra-striped back and a brilliantly red head.

We could do a lot worse than open our borders to new ideas and exotic visitors from foreign lands.