Paris Olympics to open on the Seine River

The city of Paris, host of the 2024 Olympics, announced this Monday (13) that its opening party for one of the biggest sporting events in the world will take place on the Seine River. This will be the first time in history that a Summer Games opening ceremony will take place outside a stadium.

More than 160 boats with athletes from more than 200 delegations will parade along the river in the French capital for nearly six kilometers. The journey goes from Ponte Austerlitz to Ponte Iena, in the heart of Paris, and the closing ceremony will take place on the Trocadero esplanade, in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The organizers hope to receive around 600 thousand people, with part of the public on the banks of the river, in tribunes (with paid access) set up for the occasion. Another part of the public will have free access to the event, which will reproduce one of the most famous tourist tours in the world.

“This will be an unprecedented, avant-garde opening. There are a lot of emotions, a lot of enthusiasm. The opening ceremony will necessarily be the biggest,” said Tony Estanget, head of the Paris-2024 Games, alongside Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, during a press conference at the end of the Governing Board of the Olympic Games Organizing Committee. The event’s budget is estimated at nearly 4 billion euros (R$25.55 billion, at current prices), mostly from private funds.

Eighty giant screens will be installed along the way, “so that all spectators can enjoy the show”, which should last more than three hours. Various animations are also planned on the bridges along the way (about 10, including the famous Pont Neuf, des Arts and Alexandre III). Organizers have yet to decide where the Olympic torch will be, according to Estanguet.

French President Emmanuel Macron made the project official in July, on the eve of the Tokyo Games. Security forces reportedly tried to limit the audience to 250,000 people, but organizers and the Paris city government opted for a larger number, about 2 million people in the initial project, assured a source close to the city.

In an inter-ministerial committee dedicated to the Paris Games, which took place about a month ago in the Seine-Saint-Denis department on the outskirts of Paris, French Prime Minister Jean Castex asked Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin that formulate “proposals” for the security of the event “until the end of the year”.

Almost 50 meetings with all the authorities involved, from the Ministry of the Interior to the river institutions of the Seine, passing through the city of Paris, were necessary to study the project’s feasibility.