Page "Baron d'Holbach" Paragraph 13

Meetings were held regularly twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, in d ' Holbach's home in rue Royale, but Saint-Roche between approximately 1750-1780.

Visitors to the salon were exclusively males, and the tone of discussion highbrow, often extending to topics more extensive than those of other salons.

This, along with the excellent food, expensive wine, and a library of over 3000 volumes, attracted many notable visitors.

Among the regulars in attendance at the salon — the coterie holbachique — were the following: Diderot, Grimm, Condillac, Condorcet, D ' Alembert, Marmontel, Turgot, La Condamine, Raynal, Helvétius, Galiani, Morellet, Naigeon and, for a time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The salon was also visited by prominent British intellectuals, amongst them Adam Smith, David Hume, John Wilkes, Horace Walpole, Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Laurence Sterne, and one American — Benjamin Franklin.