Musée Grévin

Facade of the Musée Grévin.
Entrance from Passage Jouffroy

The Musée Grévin (French: [myze ɡʁevɛ̃]; Euronext: GREV) is a wax museum in Paris located on the Grands Boulevards in the 9th arrondissement on the right bank of the Seine, at 10, Boulevard Montmartre, Paris, France. It is open daily; an admission fee is charged.

The musée Grévin is as well present in Montreal and Seoul.

History

The museum was founded in 1882 by Arthur Meyer, a journalist for Le Gaulois, on the model of Madame Tussauds founded in London in 1835 [1] and named for its first artistic director, caricaturist Alfred Grévin. It is one of the oldest wax museums in Europe. Its baroque architecture includes a hall of mirrors based on the principle of a catoptric cistula and a theater for magic shows. The hall of mirrors was built for the Exposition Universelle in 1900.[2] It was originally housed in the Palais des mirages designed by Eugène Hénard.[3]

Léopold Bernhard Bernstamm was one of the official sculptors for the museum in its earliest days.[4]

Louis Aragon wrote poems under the name of Le Musée Grévin (using the pseudonym of François la Colère), published during the Vichy regime by the Éditions de Minuit underground editor.

The first animated films were shown here between 1892 and 1900 by Charles-Émile Reynaud, with his Théâtre Optique.[5]

Attractions

The Musée Grévin now contains some 450 characters arranged in scenes from the history of France and modern life, including a panorama of French history from Charlemagne to Napoleon III and bloody scenes of the French Revolution, with the original wax figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessing their technical evolution. By contrast, the more contemporaneous movie stars, athletes, and international figures such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan, and Pope John Paul II use the modern techniques of modeling. The tableau of Charlotte Corday murdering Jean-Paul Marat created in 1889 includes the actual knife and bathtub used.

New wax characters are regularly added to the Museum among more than 2000 made since it opened. They include Zinedine Zidane, Monica Bellucci, Isabelle Adjani[2] and Nolwenn Leroy.[6]

Bollywood celebrities whose wax has been added include Shah Rukh Khan[7], Aishwarya Rai[8] and Ranveer Singh.[9]

Grévin Montréal (2013)

Grévin Seoul (2015)

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Grevin Wax Museum in Paris". Paris Digest. 2018. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  2. 1 2 Blackmore, Ruth (2012). The Rough Guide to Paris. London: Rough Guides. p. 71. ISBN 1405386959.
  3. ↑ "Passages et Galeries - 1ère partie". Sur les toits de paris. 25 August 2010. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
  4. ↑ fr Catalogue-almanach of the Musée Grévin, 1891
  5. ↑ l’association les Amis d’Émile Reynaud. "Autour d'une cabine ou Mésaventures d'un copurchic aux bains de mer - Émile Reynaud" (in French). Archived from the original on 2012-04-14. Retrieved 2009-12-18.
  6. ↑ "Nolwenn Leroy" (in French). Musée Grévin. Retrieved 2015-04-20.
  7. ↑ "Now, Shah Rukh's wax statue in Paris". Hindustan Times. March 8, 2008.
  8. ↑ "First Look: Aishwarya's wax statue in Europe's oldest museum". India Today. July 14, 2013.
  9. ↑ Verma, Abhinav (July 7, 2017). "The Internet thinks that Ranveer Singh's wax statue looks more like Shiamak Davar". Hindustan Times.
  10. ↑ (fr) Musée des moulages dermatologiques de l'hôpital Saint-Louis, site bium.univ-paris5.fr.
  11. ↑ (fr) Musée des moulages dermatologiques de l'hôpital Saint-Louis, site hôpital-Saint-Louis.aphp.fr.

Coordinates: 48°52′18″N 2°20′32″E / 48.87167°N 2.34222°E / 48.87167; 2.34222

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