Madame Tussauds (54 photos)

The most famous wax museum is Madame Tussauds. Everything you see elsewhere is just a low-quality parody of what's here. The wax figures for this museum are created by such magnificent craftsmen that they could easily create magnificent architectural masterpieces, but instead they copy people - stars, celebrities, historical figures - in wax, for which we are naturally immensely grateful to them.

Even from this small selection of photos you can see how accurate these figures are. When their living prototype stands nearby and freezes for a second, it becomes completely unclear where the person is and where, in fact, the wax figure is.

Madame Tussauds was founded by sculptor Marie Tussauds. The main museum is located in London's Marylebone, but its branches are located in 14 other cities around the world, including: Amsterdam, Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Berlin and others. The first exhibits for the museum were made by Marie Tussaud herself back in 1777. The very first wax figure was an image of Voltaire. Over more than two hundred years of its existence, the museum began to count a huge number of wax sculptures. It must be said that working on each one is very long and extremely difficult. 20 people work on one figure at once. More than 500 measurements are taken from each person for whom a sculpture is created, if it is a non-historical person, and not a single star will be capricious or refuse due to difficulties, because imprinting oneself in a sculpture, even a wax one, is a memory that will remain for centuries, and maybe much longer.

She studied the art of creating wax figures from the famous physician of those times, Philippe Curtus, and at the age of 16 she created her first figure - Voltaire. Many others followed. Mary's fame grew, but then the French Revolution broke out, changing her life. During the revolution, Madame Tussaud made death masks of the royal family and victims of the revolution, which she then put on display to the public in her museum in London, where she moved in 1802. Madame Tussaud died in 1850.

Wax figures did not live long - only a few years, and therefore new technologies were required to create and preserve them. The descendants of Marie Tussaud found a new way to fix the wax, thereby extending the life of the exhibits. By the way, today the technology for creating sculptures has remained virtually unchanged, but to the delight of the craftsmen, many materials have been added - artificial leather, plastic and much more.

In 1854 the museum moved from Baker Street to Marylebone Road, where it remains to this day. Unfortunately, in 1925 there was a fire in the museum, so part of the collection was lost, but most of the exhibits were recreated.

Now the wax museum is constantly updated, the collections change, depending on the appearance of new “stars” and notable personalities on the horizon.

Voskovoy Ilyich

Vladimir Lenin represents Russia at the Amsterdam branch of the Madame Tussauds wax museum. Previously, the waxen Ilyich shook his fist at the capitalist West in splendid isolation.

Alpha and Omega" of Russian socialism

Later, he was accompanied by the first and last president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schrödar. What the German politician has in common with the “alpha and omega” of socialism in Russia is his belief in the ideals of social democracy and his affiliation with the corresponding parties.

On January 15, 2009, Madame Tussauds in New York acquired its own Gorbachev. The 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, was appointed Mikhail Sergeevich's neighbor.

Putin as an exhibit

But Vladimir Putin arouses genuine interest abroad. There is a wax copy of the Russian president in the London branch of the Madame Tussauds museum...

..and also at Madame Tussauds in Bangkok. According to visitor statistics, Putin collected a record number of views.

In addition to our political figures, the number of “Russian” exhibits at the Madame Tussauds museum included hockey player Alexander Ovechkin, now playing for the NHL club Washington Capitals. Striving for maximum realism, the artists of Washington's Madame Tussauds museum not only took about 250 photographs of the athlete, but also deprived a wax double of the same tooth that is missing from the living Alexander.

Madame Tussauds