This seminar-style lecture presents a case study in intellectual history of early modern architecture, by focusing on two short pieces of writing on Yuanming Yuan, one by Louis François Delatour (1727-1807) and the other by Victor Hugo (1802-1885).  The lecture compares and juxtaposes the two authors’ methods of identification of Yuanming Yuan, and analyzes them in three steps: first by identifying their texts; second, by mapping ideas behind their arguments; and finally by recounting the sources of their information.  In doing so, the presenter and audience will together examine how the unique contrast between Delatour and Hugo’s architectural connotations of “China” and “Europe” can reflect transformation in European intellectual landscape, and how such a transformation in turn mirrors changes in the broader European views of Qing China during the period of two hundred years.