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Origin and history

The Grévin Museum finds its roots in an ancient tradition of wax representation of royal and historical personalities. From the 17th century, artists like Antoine Benoist created wax funeral masks, popularizing the "wax cabinets". In the 18th century, Philippe Curtius, assisted by Marie Tussaud, exhibited royal figures at the Palais-Royal. After the Revolution, Tussaud emigrated to London and founded his famous museum in 1835, inspiring several temporary Parisian attempts in the 19th century, such as the Hartkoff Museum (1865) or the Jules Talrich French Museum (1867), without lasting success.

The Grévin Museum was founded in 1881 on the initiative of Arthur Meyer, editor of the newspaper Le Gaulois, who wanted to give a face to current figures, at a time when photography remained rare in the press. He joined forces with sculptor Alfred Grévin, already a cartoonist for his newspaper, to create wax statues. The museum opened on 5 June 1882 and was immediately successful. In 1883, Gabriel Thomas, financier at the origin of the Eiffel Tower, resumed the project, structuring its development until 1999. The museum quickly enriched with Baroque decors, a theatre (1884), and the Palais des Mirages (1908), while integrating innovations such as the light pantomimes of Émile Reynaud in 1892.

The museum evolves with its time, increasing from 200 to more than 2,000 figures created since 1882, renewed according to current events. Historical scenes (French Revolution, Napoleon) met with modern celebrities, while branches were created in France (Lourdes, Mont-Saint-Michel) and abroad (Montréal, Prague, Seoul) between the 1970s and 2010. In 2001, the Académie Grévin, chaired by Stéphane Bern, was created to select the new personalities exhibited. The museum, always private, remains an emblematic place for Parisian entertainment, combining art, history and technology.

The Grévin Theatre, registered as a historical monument in 1964, houses a stage curtain painted by Jules Chéret and an upper relief by Antoine Bourdelle. The museum, located at 10 Boulevard Montmartre, attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. His workshop, where statues (34 kg of wax and 22 litres of painting per figure) are made, perpetuates artisanal know-how involving sculptors, painters and costumers. Some historical figures, such as Death of Marat (1889), have been on display for more than a century.

The museum also swarmed through ephemeral projects, such as a barge crisscrossing the canals of northern France (1950–1958) or annexes to the Forum des Halles (1981–1996). Despite the closures (Prague in 2018, Montreal in 2021), the Grévin brand continues, with recent openings such as Chaplins World in Switzerland (2016). The removed statues, such as those of Georges Marchais or Valéry Giscard of Estaing, are kept in a warehouse, bearing witness to the evolution of celebrities and collective memory.

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