Madame Tussauds is a world-renowned wax museum where famous personalities from music, cinema and film, history, politics and the world of sport are recreated and exhibited lifelike and with great attention to detail. Madame Tussauds branches can now be found on all continents of the world, with Australia in the pipeline for 2012.
Madame Tussauds is a wax museum where famous personalities of the past and present have been recreated in wax life-size, frighteningly lifelike and with great attention to detail.
Madame Tussauds is named after its founder Marie Tussaud. The Frenchwoman's handicraft has a rather macabre background. During the French Revolution, the heads of the executed were displayed on spears. However, as these quickly gave off an extremely unpleasant odour and attracted flies, the memorials were replaced by death masks cast in wax. After her release from prison, Marie Grosholtz, as she was then known, was forced to make these death masks to prove her allegiance to the Revolution, including that of the King and Queen, her former employers as an art teacher in Versailles.
The art of shaping them as lifelike as possible was the basis for Madame Tussaud's first collection. She exhibited her self-created figures for the first time in London at the beginning of the 19th century. Due to the great success, she and her sons founded their own wax museum on Baker Street in London in 1835, which she ran until her death in 1850. In 1884, the museum was moved to its present location on Marylebone Road in London.
In the meantime, the popular waxworks have been set up on four of the five continents of the world:
Madame Tussauds in Europe:
Since 1835 in London, Great Britain
Since 1971 in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Since 2011 in Blackpool, Great Britain
Since 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey
Madame Tussauds in America, USA:
Madame Tussauds in Asia:
Since 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand
Madame Tussauds in Australia:
The museum in London has twice in history suffered a fire disaster, once in 1925 due to an electrical short circuit and once in 1940 due to German air raids during the Second World War. Several thousand moulds were so damaged that they could no longer be used. Among other things, the replica of Napoleon's carriage was lost as a result.
Today, in addition to famous figures from history, actors, athletes, music stars, politicians or models are also recreated.
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