Madame Tussauds Museum

Madame Tussauds is a famous wax museum of London that has branches at major cities world over. It was founded by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud and was popular as “Madame Tussaud’s”, but the apostrophe is no longer used and it has now simply become Madame Tussauds. Madame Tussauds is a major center of tourist attraction in London, which displays the waxworks of historical and royal figures, film stars, sports stars and famous murderers. It is situated on the corner of Allsop Place and Marylebone Road as to the north of Central London. The nearest Tube station close to it is Baker Street, that is on the Jubilee, Bakerloo, Metropolitan , Circle and Hammersmith and City Lines. Its green dome is used to house the London Planetarium.

After having a successful tour of the UK, Madame Tussauds made a permanent base for her exhibition in London in the Baker Street Bazaar in 1835. There visitors used to pay    six pence as to meet the biggest names of their time. From there attraction moved to its present location in Marylebone Road in 1884. From here it can be told about how this museum came into existence and its present shape and form.

Marie Tussaud, was born in Strasbourg, France and her mother used to work as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius in Bern, Switzerland, who was a physician skilled in wax modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. She made her first wax figure of Voltaire in 1777. At that time she even made wax model of other famous personalities Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During the French Revolution she modelled many prominent victims. After the doctor’s death she inherited his huge collection of wax models and thereafter spent around 33 years traveling throughout the Europe. In 1795 she married to François Tussaud. In 1802, she went to London but due to Franco-British war, she was not able to return to France, therefore she travelled throughout Great Britain and Ireland showing her collection. Exhibiting her collection from 1831 she took a series of short leases on the “Baker Street Bazaar” and it became her first permanent home in 1836 and there opened a museum.

One of the primary attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors that exhibits victims of the French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers and other criminals.

By 1883 due to lack of space and rising cost of the Baker Street site her grandson (Joseph Randall) shifted the museum to its current location at on Marylebone Road. The new exhibition galleries were started from on 14 July 1884 and were a huge success.  Madame Tussaud’s wax museum presently is a popular tourist attraction in London and has branches at Amsterdam, Bangkok, Berlin, Dubai, Hamburg, Hollywood, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Moscow, New York City, Shanghai, Vienna and Washington D.C.

The present day wax figures at Tussauds include historical and royal figures, film stars, sports stars and famous murderers. Known as “Madame Tussauds” museums its present owner are Merlin Entertainments, that acquired The Tussauds Group in May 2007.

There are many section of the museum, the most popular one are:

•    A-List Party: This is the first room while entering the museum as it showcases personalities from the United States including wax sculptures of      Robert Pattinson, Morgan Freeman, Leo DiCaprio, Nicole Kidman, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Tara Palmer Tompkinson.

•    Warhol’s Women: The Warhol’s Women zone has figure of Andy Warhol as well other female celebrities portrayed by her like  Liza Minnelli, and Jerry Hall.

•    Premiere Night (Movie Room): This area is famous for celebrities from Bollywood as well as Hollywood. It is consisted of sculptors of celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Jim Carrey, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Whoopi Goldberg and Marilyn Monroe. It also has many fictional characters like as Shrek and the smallest wax figure ever made, Tinker Bell.

•    Sports Zone: This area undoubtedly is for sport personalities like as there tiger woods can be seen as putt a golf ball with Tiger Woods, stand on boxing scales next to Mohammed Ali and see what ‘weight’ you would qualify for in boxing.

•    A Royal Appointment: In this section there are stationed wax statues of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Charles, Prince of Wales, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William of Wales and Prince Henry of Wales.

•    Culture: In the culture section one can enjoy wax statutes of cultural and scientific icons like William Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Pablo Picasso and Charles Darwin.

•    Music Megastars: This section contains wax statues of stars including Beyonce, Madonna, Britney Spears, Leona Lewis, Michael Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Amy Winehouse, Tom Jones, Bob Marley, Justin Timberlake and Freddie Mercury.

•    World Leaders: This area is consisted of world leader’s area from political and spiritual segments. The latest addition to this segment is figure of Barack Obama dominating this area. Other leaders that have their wax statues here are Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Benazir Bhutto, Martin Luther King, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Gandhi.

•    Chamber of Horrors and Scream: The horror section of Madame Tussauds, showcases serial killers and murders. As Guy Fawkes and Dennis Nilsen are placed here.  It also shows the original guillotine blade that killed Marie Antoinette. The Scream experience is a live-action, actor-led scare maze.

•    Marvel Super Heroes 4D: Here are located wax figures of super heroes like incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and Spiderman and  wolverine.

London museums are very true to the definition of museum as place for collection of objects of scientific, artistic or historical importance with objective to make them available for public viewing by exhibits that occur to be permanent or as of a temporary nature. London has hundred of museums and exhibitions of larger as well as smaller size. Here brief of some of the prominent museums of London is provided for reader’s interest as to acquaint them with history and tradition of London as well as the United States.

• British Museum: This museum showcases the human history and culture exhibits from more than seven million in numbers from all continents. One of the largest museums in the world, it keeps the entire history of human civilization from ancient to modern period preserved in documentations and collections. It was founded in 1753, initially on the collection of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It was open for public on 15th January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury. Though during the century long history it developed into a several branch institutions and its first branch was British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887.    It is a non departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and has no admission fee to visit this museum.  Since 2002 the director of the museum has been Neil MacGregor.

British Museum

• Churchill War Rooms: This Museum in London is one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum.  This particular museum is consisted of Cabinet War Rooms, a historic underground complex containing British government command center during the Second World War, and the Churchill Museum, a biographical museum exploring the life of British statesman Winston Churchill. The Cabinet war rooms hence were constructed below the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster in 1938 and became operational from August 1939 just before the start of the war in Europe. And were in operation during entire period of Second World War II, before they were surrendered in August 1945 after the surrender of Japan. As a branch of a national museum, the Churchill War Rooms is supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, by admissions income and the museum’s commercial activity.

Churchil War Rooms

• Imperial War Museum : It is a British national museum that has branches spread about at five different places in England. Among its five branches five are situated in London itself.  This museum was started back during the period of First World War in 1971 with objective to preserve effort and sacrifice put down by Britain and her Empire during the war.  The museum tells people about informed information of modern war and its impact over individuals and society. In start museum started at Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, and it opened to the public in 1920. It works as a charity under the Charities Act of 1993 as a non departmental public body under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

• London Transport Museum: Situated at Covent Garden, London this museum tell all in entirely about the transport heritage of Britain’s capital city. Initially, museum had collection of London Transport; however, with expansion of creation of Transport for London (TFL) in 2000, the museum has expanded to cover all the import aspects of transportation in the city. Later on museum was renamed as to cover topics beyond London as London’ Transport Museum.

• Museum of London: This museum showcases the history of London from the Prehistoric period to the present time. It is situated close to Barbican Center as is a few minutes’ walk north of St Paul’s Cathedral. The museum is a non-departmental public body.

• National Maritime Museum : It is a  maritime museum of its type in National Maritime Museum (NMM) in Greenwich, England and is the one of the best museum its type in the world. It is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It has  around two million items including maritime art cartography, manuscripts that contains official public records, ship models and plans, scientific and navigational instruments, instruments for time-keeping and astronomy.

National Maritime Museum London

• Natural History Museum: It is situated on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England  houses around exhibits from life and earth science specimens combining nearly 70 million items primarily divided into categories like Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology. It is a world famous center of research, specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Its many collections have intensive historical as well as scientific value like as specimens of Darwin. It contains extensive books, journals, manuscripts and artwork collections as aligning to different scientific departments.

Natural History Museum

• Science Museums : It is too located at Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. It holds a collection of around 300,000 items, involving famous items like as Stephenson’s Rocket, Puffing Billy, the first jet engine and many other wonderful scientific exhibits.

• Sir John Soane Museum: It is a museum of architecture and formerly was the house and studio of the neo-classical architect Sir John Soane. This museum keeps collection of many a number of drawings and antiquities as collected by him. It is located at Holborn district of central London, England. It is a non non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and sport.

• Victoria & Albert Museums: It is situated at The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, London, England, and is credited being as the  world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design while keeping a collection of over 4.5 million objects. It was opened with the name of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria and was founded in 1852, and since then it has been grown into a museum of around 12.5 acres and 145 galleries. It has collection of nearly 5000 years of art, from the ancient times to the present day from regions like Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. It is a non departmental body as sponsored by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Victoria and Albert Museum

• Madame Tussaud Museum: It is a wax museum in London with a number of branches in a number of major cities globally. The museum was founded by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud and later named as “Madame Tussaud’s” Museum.

Other museums apart from said and discussed above are Guards’ Museum, Hermitage Rooms,  Jewel Tower, London Canal Museum, London Fire Brigade Museum, Alexadner Fleming Laboratory Museum, Bramah Tea & Coffee Museum, Britain at War Experience, Clink Prison Museum, Bramah Tea & Coffee Museum,  Clink Prison Museum, Design Museum,  Faraday Museum, Florence Nightingale Museum,  Museum of Garden History, National Army Museum, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Pollock’s Toy Museum, Sherlock Holmes Museum, Wellington Museum.