It was one of the most joyous – and most glamorous – royal visits ever. So can YOU tell what is wrong with this magnificent photograph of the Queen?

It is monumental in sweep, blending formal dignity with grand scale and, even today, unrivaled glamour.

This famous black and white panorama by photographer Bert Hardy captures the young Queen Elizabeth at the Paris Opera House, Palais Garnier, on her first state visit to France in April 1957.

It is an extraordinary occasion. Packed shoulder to shoulder in evening gowns, members of the Parisian elite look down from stone parapets. The colossal staircase is lined with helmeted Republican guards, swords in the air. Uniformed trumpeters play.

And there in the heart of the tableau, almost flooded, yet plucked out in the light of the candelabra, walks the little star of the show, Elizabeth herself. It is not yet three years since her coronation.

Compelling in both detail and composition, the image is a triumph of press photography – all the more so when you realize that there is not one image here, but many.

First published in Picture Post on April 20, the panorama consists of 15 or more separate images, each trimmed with a scalpel by Hardy’s colleagues back in London and then taped together to create a single whole.

‘Trickery’ has a long history when it comes to royal photographs.

Hardy would later describe it as one of the most ambitious montages, or ‘join ups’, he had ever produced in a long and lauded career, and today it is featured in a new exhibition of his work at a major London gallery .

He wasn’t even supposed to be there that night. In his 1985 memoir, My Life, Hardy explains that although he officially represented the Picture Post – a pioneering photojournalism magazine – access to the opera house had been severely restricted.

“The Paris Match was very much our competition and there was a rota system in place,” he recalls. “Only two Frenchmen and two of us were allowed to enter; but the French newsmen were above the rules.

‘They had 20, we wanted two and the French police made sure that was all we had… The French press had cheated like crazy, I knew that. I decided it was time the British press did a bit of cheating.

‘I usually had a hard time getting hold of a dinner jacket. The only one I could borrow was several sizes too big, but it fit me. I was able to hide my Leica (camera) inside it.’

Linking up with a group of French dignitaries resplendent in sackcloth hats, Hardy slipped through the entrance, looking for a good vantage point.

‘I went up the magnificent staircase and found a small box next to which the residents made room for me, thinking I was an official pressman,’ he continues.

‘It was an amazing panorama and I started to realize that the scene was just too big for a standard lens to capture. The only thing to do was to do a massive “join-up”.

‘Before the Queen actually entered, I started taking pictures of the grand entrance, slowly working from left to right and top to bottom, making sure the edges of each shot coincided as far as possible with a function like f .eg a balcony or column.

‘In total I took about 20 separate shots and the last shot of all showed the Queen climbing the stairs.’

After sending the film to London, Hardy called his wife, Sheila, an image researcher at Picture Post ‘to explain what I had done so she could tell the make-up man how to put the jigsaw together.’

Few readers would have noticed anything wrong at the time, although the scalpel marks around the individual images are more visible on today’s computer screens.

One clue is that the guards on the right side of the panorama, figure 7 in our illustration, have their swords lowered rather than raised, suggesting that they were captured early in Hardy’s sequence, before the arrival of the Queen and President Rene Coty.

There is also something odd about the sword in Figure 1, which appears to have been cut out and pasted on top of its holder.

Hardy later received a congratulatory letter from the British Embassy, ​​in which he noted that his ‘excellent’ picture was ‘much better than what Paris Match was able to do with much larger opportunities.’

Sometimes described as a monarchy without a crown, France was delighted by the four-day visit, which began at Orly Airport on April 8.

The Queen and Prince Philip found a nation not only grateful for Britain’s support in the war, but united in shared anger – and humiliation – at the recent failure of the joint Franco-British Suez Expedition.

Huge crowds, some chanting ‘Long live the Queen’, jostled outside hoping to catch a glimpse when Elizabeth, still only 30, arrived at the ballet on the first night. A balcony performance with President Coty would follow.

The surviving Pathe newsreels show the French police struggling to hold off almost uncanny crowds of well-wishers.

The Associated Press reported that: ‘Thousands jostled and jostled for vantage points’ to catch a glimpse of Her Majesty. ‘Many were crawling on top of chairs and tables at nearby pavement cafes. Score was almost trampled down.’

From start to finish, the host nation overflowed with generosity.

There were visits to Versailles, which was still undergoing its long post-war refurbishment, and to Renault Motors, where the Queen was given a car – a light blue Dauphin which had been assembled at Renault’s factory in Acton, west London.

The Paris municipality presented a model railway based on the metro – too complicated for eight-year-old Prince Charles, the Queen said, but his father would be delighted – and a collection of 12 Parisian dolls for Princess Anne, each representing a different part of the city.

If their first exciting night at the Palais Garnier marked a highlight for the visitors, the second was a night cruise along the Seine where they were treated to live tableaus on the banks, music from the eerily white-clad boy choristers of Notre Dame and fireworks.

It is estimated that a million Parisians lined the route.

This, says historian and biographer Hugo Vickers, was a special moment in post-war history, when France was still reeling from its 1940 capitulation to the Nazis and hugely grateful for Britain’s support.

“The French government and the city of Paris really pulled out all the stops for this visit,” he says. The rooms where the Queen stayed at the Elysée Palace had been specially furnished for the Queen.

The British ambassador at the time, Sir Gladwyn Jebb, noted that there had been a rise in sentiment throughout France thanks to the ‘queen’s simplicity, charm and grace’ and the ‘virile and democratic demeanor of Prince Philip’.

Sir Gladwyn believed that Serge Lifar’s ballet, Le Chevalier et la Demoiselle, had been a dismal failure at the Palais Garnier, but that the ‘tremendous enthusiasm’ of the audience and the audience outside had more than made up for it.

Although better known for its working-class and industrial scenes, the 1957 state visit was not the first time Hardy photographed royalty. One of his first commercial successes was a photograph of George V taken during the jubilee celebrations in 1935.

‘Using a second-hand plate camera he had bought with his salary from working in a photographic development laboratory, Hardy took a picture of the King and Queen in an open carriage,’ explains Tom Allbeson, a senior lecturer in media history who works in Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives, where Hardy’s papers are kept.

‘As the royals worked Blackfriars Road in front of billowing crowds, he photographed them in front of the facade of Gaskell & Chambers – a firm specializing in furnishing pubs and bars – for local colour.

‘He then made 200 postcards of that image and sold them to friends and family in the neighbourhood.’

Hardy took that photo at the end of the street where he grew up, in fact, and close to the blue plaque commemorating him today.

A decade earlier he had photographed the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, with one striking overhead shot appearing – of course – in Picture Post.

The original was later bought at auction by the Queen herself and is today in the Royal Photograph Collection at Windsor Castle.

In 2009 the curator wrote to Sheila, Bert’s widow, saying:

“We were particularly excited to acquire the photograph as we have surprisingly few works relating to the Queen’s wedding. It is a wonderful acquisition.’

Today the Cardiff archive contains a number of Bert Hardy’s press cards from the remarkable trip to Paris in 1957.

However, there is nothing that gives him access to the Palais Garnier.

Bert Hardy: Photojournalism in War And Peace is at The Photographers’ Gallery, London W1F 7LW until Sunday 2 June

• Bert Hardy: Photojournalism in War And Peace is at The Photographers’ Gallery, London W1F 7LW until Sunday 2 June