Visitors to London’s Madame Tussauds near Baker Street can get up-close and personal with over 300 wax figures including A-list celebrities, sporting legends, political heavyweights, historical icons, and the Royal Family. Madame Tussaud was born Marie Grosholtz in Strasbourg in 1761. She learned to model wax likenesses in Paris, and at the age of 17, she moved to the Palace of Versailles as an art tutor to King Louis XVI’s sister. During the French Revolution, she was imprisoned, and later forced to prove her allegiance to the Revolution by making death masks of executed nobles as well as her former employers, the King and Queen. Following the Revolution, Madame Tussaud came to Britain with a travelling exhibition of wax figures, revolutionary relics, and effigies of public heroes and rogues. In 1835, she established a permanent exhibition based in London known as the ‘Baker Street Bazaar’. Madame Tussauds moved to its present site in Marylebone Road in 1884.
- Madame Tussauds
- Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LR
- www.madametussauds.com
- Underground: Baker Street