Rosa Bouglione

Belgian-French circus performer and centenarian, known as the matriarch of the Bouglione circus family. She is considered the Big Top’s most eccentric, and oldest, character.

The daughter of lion-tamer parents, French-Dutch Jules Van Been and an Italian mother, she was born in a caravan. She had four siblings, three brothers and a sister.

Bouglione began performing as a child and was known for her serpent dance, in which she danced with her father in a cage full of lions.

She wed Joseph Bouglione on 4 January 1928 while in her teens, opting to marry him in a lion cage instead of a church. They had 7 children: 3 sons and 4 daughters (and 55 descendants!).

In 2011 she published Un mariage dans la cage aux lions : la grande saga du cirque Bouglione (A wedding in the lions' cage: the great saga of the Bouglione circus).

In October 2014, the 103-year-old Bouglione was reported as remaining active, and had 53 grandchildren and great grandchildren. Bouglione died at the age of 107 on 26 August 2018 in Paris.