# Brighton's palace already makes England look foreign

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH01.P002](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH01.P002/#char=504,572): "that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton"

The Royal Pavilion is an unusually exact choice for this mistake: an English royal residence deliberately given an Asian appearance. John Nash transformed its exterior for the Prince Regent between 1815 and 1822, adding Indian-inspired domes and minarets; its interiors drew extensively on Chinese and other Asian decorative arts. It was a pleasure palace, not a temple. By Chesterton's time it was also a familiar public attraction: Brighton bought it in 1850 and opened it to visitors. [Royal Collection Trust](https://www.rct.uk/collection/stories/brighton-pavilion-the-making-of-a-pleasure-palace); [Brighton & Hove Museums](https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/visit/royal-pavilion-garden/our-history/).

The building thus already contains the double experience the yachtsman is supposed to discover: the supposedly exotic is physically at home. Calling it a barbaric temple describes the armed visitor's mistaken classification, not the building's function. The flag-planting joke also turns the explorer's confidence against him: his apparent discovery is an act of failing to recognize his own country. That reading follows the scene's construction; it does not establish a particular expedition as its historical target.

## Sources

- [Brighton Pavilion: The Making of a Pleasure Palace](https://www.rct.uk/collection/stories/brighton-pavilion-the-making-of-a-pleasure-palace), Paragraphs on Nash's alterations, 1815–1822, and Crace and Jones's interiors
- [History — Royal Pavilion](https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/visit/royal-pavilion-garden/our-history/), The Royal Pavilion Grows; Queen Victoria; Town takes over

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