This past week, the city of Toulouse was stormed by a 50-foot high Minotaur and a gigantic spider named Ariadne. And no, this isn’t a new Marvel superhero flick starring Chris Hemsworth.
Most theatrical companies stick to stages and amphitheaters, but the French enterprise La Machine decided to go for something a little bigger for the debut of a new exhibition space in Toulouse that will display all sorts of wonky robots. The Minotaur, named Astérion, and the spider, Ariane, were part of a show called “The Guardian of the Temple,” which closed earlier this week. They followed up their performance with an encore through the streets of Toulouse, where they entertained a likely 400,000 people. The creations of La Machine’s artistic director François Delarozière, these beautiful monsters take more than a dozen workers each to move.
The city hopes the stunt and the new exhibition space will help drive tourism to Toulouse. Whether this will happen, who can say, but at least for a time, Toulouse residents had a few fantastic beasts, and knew where to find them.
