Foreign visitors to the Tower of London follow a millennium-long tradition of overseas travellers.  The White Tower was built after the invasion of England by the Norman French, and links between England and Normandy remained strong.  The use of continental expertise in design and construction continued: during Henry III’s improvements, John ‘le Fossur’ (the ditcher), an engineer, arrived from Flanders and successfully flooded the Tower’s moat. 

Many exotic animals ended up at the Tower menagerie as gifts from foreign rulers and in the 1930s the skulls of two lions and leopard were found in the moat.   In 1251, a white bear - perhaps a polar bear - arrived at the Tower from Norway.  The Sheriffs of London had to pay for its muzzle, iron chain and cord long enough to allow it to dive for fish in the river.  In 1255, the King of France gave Henry III an elephant, the first depicted in England. 

From the reign of Elizabeth I onwards, tourists were a regular sight at the Tower of London, though its first official guidebook did not appear until the mid-18th century.  Native Americans from Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony at Roanake visited Elizabeth I at Hampton Court Palace in October 1584.  In June 1661, Samuel Pepys ‘with much pleasure walked quite around the Tower, which [he] never did before’ and in November, with snow falling, he saw the Russian ambassador being received on Tower Hill.