The much-awaited Chaplin’s World opens at last on 17 April 2016. Part museum, part theme park, it is set on the very domain where Charlie Chaplin lived with his family during the last 25 years of his life. In a 14-hectare park of lush trees in Corsier-sur-Vevey, above Lake Geneva and next to a UNESCO World Heritage site, take a walk through the life and the films of the world’s best-loved movie character.
Museum
To tell Charlie Chaplin’s story, the family mansion, Manoir de Ban, has been lavishly refurbished and kitted out with family memorabilia never exposed before. Several of the eight children from Chaplin’s marriage with Oona O’Neill, daughter of Nobel laureate playwright Eugene O’Neill, have contributed souvenirs from their childhood, and all that will be missing are their cries and pitter-patter as they ran through the house.
Theme studio
At the entrance of the property, a purpose-built studio recreates Chaplin’s life as an artist. We are taken through his films with real sets and props in a technological whirlwind worthy of a Hollywood special effects studio.
Fifteen years in the making, the Chaplin museum aims to reinvent the museum-going experience under the Grévin umbrella, an entertainment consortium that originated with the famed Paris wax museum.