At 19:30 Paris time on July 26, the 33rd Summer Olympic Games kicked off in the rain. The flowing Seine River connects Hemingway's flowing feast about Paris, and the gurgling water is written into a beautiful long poem, telling the graceful style that belongs to France and Paris.
The flowing Seine
The perfect stage for the city
The people who live by the water have made many of the world's most famous cities live on the water, and Paris is no different. The Seine, which originates in the mountains of east-central France and has a length of about 780 kilometers, represents not only the romance of Paris, but also the culture and history of France. In the nineteenth century, France who wanted to go to sea could embark a boat on the Seine and enter the English Channel via Le Havre to start a longer voyage. Even if the Seine cannot be called the mother river of France in terms of length or historical significance, without the Seine, the history and culture of Paris would not be able to tell.
For this reason, during the much-anticipated opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the Seine has also become a well-deserved protagonist - 205 delegations from various countries, about 6,800 athletes sailed on the Seine in 85 boats from east to west for about six kilometers, and then went ashore via the Jena Bridge next to the Eiffel Tower, arriving at the Place de la Trocadero on the other side of the Eiffel Tower. The Seine and the landmarks along the way form this huge stage, which is a cross-century and century-old confrontation with the second Olympic Games held in Paris a hundred years ago.
1
Austerlitz Bridge
The starting point for the parade of athletes is the Austerlitz Bridge, which was built to commemorate a famous battle during the Third War of the French Alliance. Blue, white and red France flags burst into the sky, romantically decorating the Parisian sky. The Seine is transformed into a flowing open theater in which the athletes are the protagonists of the 6-kilometre cruise.
2
Notre-Dame de Paris
Masked parkour torchbearers weave through the rooftops of major architectural landmarks. Dancers dance on the façade of Notre-Dame Cathedral, which is still being restored, with the accompaniment of balcony musicians. Five years have passed since the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, and now the burned roof has gradually been restored, and the spire, which has disappeared for four years, has returned to view.
3
The Conciergerie of Paris
When the opening ceremony appeared the picture of Marie · Antoinette, the famous "decapitated queen" in history, and the ancient prison where she was held during her lifetime suddenly spewed "blood", the audience could not help but be surprised. The Conciergerie of Paris on the Île de la Cité is a Gothic building that is now open to the public as a museum.
4
Louvre
The camera cuts to the Louvre, and the scene can be called "Louvre Wonderful Night". The torchbearers come to the Goddess of Victory in Samothrace, a marble sculpture created in 200 BC illuminated by the 2024 fire, passing by the Venus of Milos, with the Goddess of the Severed Arm winking playfully at the camera. The scene of the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 is reproduced by the gradually stirring music, and then the protagonists of the paintings "The Raft of the Medusa", "The Death of Marat" and "The Oath of the Horace Brothers" have escaped from the paintings and gathered by the window, where they are watching the opening ceremony taking place on the Seine at this moment in time!
5
Pont Royal: 5 masterpieces hidden in the Seine
As the boat crosses the Pont Royal, six faces with different expressions emerge in the river in front of the Musée d'Orsay, each from five masterpieces: Gabrielle ·de Stré and one of her sisters by the Fontainebleau classic, the 17th-century France painter Georges ·de la Tour · The Cheating of Square A, Marie-Guillemina Benoit 1803 Portrait of Madeleine, and the ancient Egypt relief Goddess Hathor Greets Pharaoh Seti I. and King Abbas I and His Acolytes, painted in 1627 by the Persian artist Muhammad · Qasim. Beneath the surface of the Seine, these faces from various fragments of art history whisper, telling the story of the undercurrent in the murmuring of the water.
6
Musée d'Orsay
When the torchbearers run to the Musée d'Orsay, the timeline goes back to the time of the eighth art, the invention of cinema. The machinery behind the iconic clock of the Musée d'Orsay begins to roar, and the screen is a nod to the Lumière brothers' first film in history, The Train Arrives, in 1895. The torchbearer penetrated the screen, as if leading the audience to break the fourth wall, board a hot air balloon and fly into space, fly to the moon in "Journey to the Moon" created by France filmmaker and magician Georges · Méliès, and then pass through classic movie scenes such as "The Little Prince", and the Minions in the underwater submarine finally find the missing "Mona Lisa".
7
Grand Palais, Paris
Singing slowly above the Grand Palais in Paris, the La Marseillaise was re-arranged for the opening by composer and ceremonial music director Victor le Masne. While the music hovered over Paris, the France flag was raised at the Trocadero Palace. At this time, the spotlight shines on ten gilded statues, which represent ten outstanding women in France history, including female politicians who drafted women's professional manifestos, female lawyers who defended women's legitimate rights and interests, and women writers who fought for feminism...... This means that advocating for gender equality will also be a big theme at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
8
Eiffel Tower
Finally, we reached the end of the voyage, the Place du Trocadero, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. The star-studded Eiffel Tower is surrounded by people from all over the world, with the Olympic rings hanging high in the night sky, and the podium in the shape of the tower echoes the Eiffel Tower across the riverbank. Riders wearing the Olympic rings rode silver pegasus on the waves of the Seine, bringing the Olympic flame.
Celine · Dion's singing sounded, and in the moving music of "Ode to Love", the lit cauldron turned into a hot air balloon and took off in the Dole Garden, paying tribute to the first hot air balloon test flight in history in front of the Louvre in 1783, and also paying tribute to the unswerving pursuit and romantic imagination of flight in human history......
In 1900, when the second Olympic Games were held for the first time in Paris, the Seine was used as the venue for seven swimming events, recording the posture of the Olympians during water sports. If you've ever seen the 1884 work "Baths of Asner" by the France painter Georges · Seurat, the Seine was still used as a summer cool place for skilled workers and local residents to enjoy the cool waters, so much so that in the 18th century the city government introduced a rule that citizens must wear clothes while swimming and bathing in the river due to moral considerations, and men and women must be separated. However, with the rapid development of urban industry, industrial pollution, household garbage, and urban sewage brought by heavy rains increased the health risks of the Seine, until 1924, a year before the return of the Olympic Games to Paris, the government issued a ban on swimming for public health reasons and safety reasons, drawing a stop to the free swimming on the Seine.
Even so, the water sports craze on the Seine never stops. After making its debut as a showcase sport at the Paris Olympics in 1924, canoeing became a permanent sport at the Berlin Olympics in Germany in 1936 and became a worldwide craze. Over the years, the Seine has also been home to many kayakers, and this year the canoe and rowing competitions are also held in Vaires-sur-Marne on the upper Seine.
The Nautic Sup Paris Crossing, which starts at the Bibliothèque National de France and ends at the Eiffel Tower, is open on the Seine for only one day a year. Since its inception in 2010, the number of participants has grown from 100 to the largest of its kind in the world. Paddleboarders and professional athletes stand on paddleboards, paddle past more than a dozen of Paris' most famous bridges, rub shoulders with world-class sights such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, and enjoy the water fun of the Seine.
Although a study in the 90s said that the Seine had become one of the rivers with the highest content of heavy metals in the world at that time, the desire to clean the Seine was not a whim, but a long-standing obsession. In 1988, Jacques Chirac, the former mayor of Paris and later ·the president of France, Jacques Chirac, promised to return a freely swimming Seine to Paris within five years, and even when Chirac died in 2019, the ambitious wish was not fulfilled. You know, the Paris sewer system, built in the 19th century, was a great project at the time, famous for its advanced technology, but a hundred years later it became an important cause of pollution in the Seine. Now, the event will return to the Seine in the most traditional way, and will become an open water and triathlon swimming venue, in order to store rainwater and contain untreated sewage, the Gare de Paris-Austerlitz station in the southeast of Paris eagerly built an underground cistern capable of holding 50,000 cubic meters of rainwater, and the boathouses moored on the river have also become the object of cleanup due to the direct discharge of sewage into the river, and require access to the municipal sewage system. Sewage connections and pumps have also been installed in the port.
In order to prove that the water quality is up to standard, Paris Mayor Anna · Hidalgo and Paris Olympic Organizing Committee President Estanguet jumped into the Seine River to "test the water" in person, indicating that the water quality of the Seine River has met the cleanliness standards required by the competition, and the 1924 swimming ban was finally lifted 100 years later. As Hidalgo said after his "swim": the Olympics are the "accelerator" of the Seine purification project, and after the Olympics, the 26 new swimming pools on the river for the events will awaken the long-lost scene of swimming in the city's rivers, and people will finally be able to jump into the Seine to swim again in a hundred years to enjoy the long-lost coolness.
From the past to the present, from history, sport and culture to art, trends and life, the Seine is inextricably linked to everything Paris. The Jena Bridge, which connects the Palais de Chailau and where the athletes landed in the opening ceremony, is lit every year on France's National Day. The "fly boats" that shuttle under the bridge, named after the names of the rivers along the Saône in the 19th century, were proposed by the 1867 Paris Exposition and in response to the need for the expansion of water shipping in Paris, these sightseeing boats followed the Saône into the Seine, passing through Paris and the suburbs, transporting tourists. In 1900, the subway began to replace water traffic, and the boats that drifted slowly on the river were no longer used as means of navigation, but in 1951 they were restarted for sightseeing purposes for water walking, and to this day it still connects the quaint of the left bank with the bustle of the right bank.
Floating on the river, there is also a variety of life in the houseboat. In an interview with Le Parisien, artists, architects, and navigators who live on ships talk about their lives on the Seine, where the maintenance and berthing fees of the boats are not necessarily lower than those on land, but the life of drifting is like an undulating river, always with challenges and surprises. From the shore to the river, some of the houseboats have been transformed into popular floating hotels on the water or Airbnb Internet celebrity accommodation, from the river view to living on the river, achieving a collection of Seine style from another perspective.
The Seine is a glittering necklace that connects some of Paris's most iconic and culturally historic buildings along the way, while also adding an unbounded and ever-new twist to the legend of this romantic city with a lifestyle that keeps pace with the times. In 2002, under the creation of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, Paris had a summer limited event called Paris Plages, where people sunbathed on beach loungers on the new beaches established along the banks of the Seine, children hung ropes and laughed to start the "flying over the Seine" cableway flying adventure, pedal boats, kayaks, canoes and other water amusement projects and Tai Chi, Qigong and Kung Fu classes on the riverside, It has also become a flash mob scenery one after another. Each electric boat with a capacity of 6 people on the river sways in front of the giant movie screen, blowing the Seine like a beach. In 2018 France chef Alain Ducasse created a 31.1-metre-long, all-electric boat-style restaurant on the Seine that blends gastronomy with beauty...... Countless films and books have used the Seine as a backdrop, and the story of this river has been unfolded, and emotions are overflowing.
Duras walked along the river in the middle of the night, walked countless times along the river, walked to the Pont de Neuilly, and then returned to Notre-Dame Cathedral, she once said: "As long as I drive, I can live, as long as I can take a ride and see the Seine, Normandy, I can live." In the movie "Love at Sunset", the hero and heroine reunited after nine years, boarded a cruise on the Seine, the vivid and colorful city was intertwined in the river scenery, and the thoughts that had never been stranded were also blown by the wind.
Looking back at the past, few people know that the romantic left bank of today's coffee shops and bookstores was only a vast wetland swamp in the Gallo-Roman period, and the right bank was only an overlap of sandbars and bays before accumulating a luxurious and grand cultural heritage. Time has passed, and as · Gregoire, the deputy mayor of Paris, who was in charge of urban planning, said, the Seine is the reason for the birth of Paris. Today, this river has long become the epic IP of the entire city's eternal brilliance, carrying the water of life in Paris, retaining the deep memories and emotions of everyone who yearns for Paris or has arrived in Paris for a long time, and it also defines the Parisian way of life, witnessing the occurrence of countless legends and stories, and writing about the new and dazzling brilliance of the city.
Written by: Han Xiaonuan
Editors: Ziqiu, Luzy, Yu Yu
The picture comes from the Internet