Why a Booktrail?
1761 – 1850: Just who was Madame Tussaud ?
Madame Tussaud
Why a Booktrail?
1761 – 1850: Just who was Madame Tussaud ?
What you need to know before your trail
When Marie moves from her family’s waxwork museum into the palace of Versailles, her whole life is set to change…When Marie Tussaud learns the exciting news the royal family will be visiting her famed wax museum, the Salon de Cire, she never dreams that the king’s sister will request her presence at Versailles: as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. As Marie familiarizes herself with Princess Elisabeth and begins to know Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, she witnesses the glamorous life of court, a very different world from her home on the Boulevard du Temple of Paris where bread can only be had on the black market and men sell their teeth to put food on the their tables. The year is 1788 and men like Desmoulins, Marat, and Robespierre are meeting in the salons of Paris speaking against the monarchy; there’s whispered talk of revolution.
Locations
Reset- France - Strasbourg
- A: Rue Madame Tussaud
- B: Paris - Rue du Petit Moine
- C: Paris - Bastille
- D: Versailles
- England- London
- E: Baker St
- F: Saint Mary's Catholic Church
- G: Madame Tussauds London
Travel Guide
Strasbourg to Bern, Paris to London
Marie Tussaud was born Marie Grosholtz on December 1, 1761in Strasbourg, France and died April 16, 1850 in London, England. She is the founder of the Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum in London which has branches across the world.
Born in a small village in Strasbourg, she spent some time in Bern working before moving to Paris. It was here that she met Philippe Curtius and learned the art of wax modelling. He had two museums of waxwork models which Marie Tussaud inherited once he had died in 1794.
Life got really interesting in around 1780 when she was employed as an art tutor at Versailles for Louis XVI’s sister , Madame Élisabeth. During the Reign of Terror,she had the not so very enviable job of creating death masks from freshly severed heads which had just been chopped off by the gullotine.
She married an engineer by the name of François Tussaud, but the marriage was short lived. In 1802 she took her two sons and her collection of wax models to England and toured the British Isles for 33 years before finally establishing a permanent home in Baker Street, London.
Madame Tussauds
She lived in London for around 8 years until she died. The Baker Street museum moved to Marylebone Road in 1884.
Many of the original models made by Marie Tussaud of people of her time such as Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Horatio Nelson, and Sir Walter Scott, have survived to this day.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Madame Tussaud
Destination : Strasbourg, Paris, London Author/Guide: Michelle Moran Departure Time: 1761 – 1850
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