It rains occasionally on this reopening day.
Intermittently, a heavy grain falls on the Arc de triomphe, where rare visitors venture.
Thirty to forty reservations were taken this morning, to which are added a few places bought by hand in the ticket office of the monument, maintained despite the pandemic.
At the entrance, we wait.
The visit windows are spaced ten minutes apart, in order to respect the gauges imposed by the government within the building.
A couple and two friends finally pass through security, not forgetting to coat their hands with hydroalcoholic gel.
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During the closure, some of the teams devoted themselves to the Christo
L'Arc de Triomphe empaqueté
exhibition
, scheduled from September 18 to October 3, 2021. The artist having disappeared in March 2020, the Christo and Jeanne-Claude collective are responsible for carrying out the project.
But above all, the monument museum presents, for the first time to the public, the exhibition dedicated to the hundred years of the Unknown Soldier.
This, initially scheduled from November 12, 2020 to November 11, 2021, could not be held due to the health crisis.
Never mind, it will be extended until January 2, 2022.
The advantage of the Arc de Triomphe - an unmissable monument and yet quite unknown to the public - lies in its location. Planted in the center of Place de l'Étoile, at the end of the Champs-Élysées, the site attracts visitors who pass through it as well as if they have booked a slot. Young couple of high school students, Madelyn and Léo have finished their lessons and stroll along "the most beautiful avenue in the world".
“It's pure luck,”
says Léo.
I remembered that we could visit the Arc de Triomphe so we came. ”
His fiancée abounds:
"It was on a whim, especially since we had never come"
.
Many are these new visitors, young people - under twenty-five - and Ile-de-France residents.
During the first reopening, in the summer of 2020, the public had considerably rejuvenated and came mainly from the Parisian metropolis.
Under the Arc de Triomphe, the cold and no waiting to visit the monument.
Lou Fritel
Romain, a soldier in his thirties, was also attracted by the occasion rather than by a pressing need to reconnect with cultural spaces:
"It's a coincidence, I was walking around."
However, he concedes that the specificity of this day partly motivated his decision.
But not only.
"I am a soldier, there is a symbolism in this place"
, where he too is going for the first time.
"Treading the flagstones of this place does something," he
enthuses.
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This smooth reopening was expected, explains an official from the Center des monuments nationaux, the body responsible for managing the Arc de Triomphe and nearly a hundred other monuments and state properties. And the arrangements currently made have already proved their worth in June 2020. While the number of daily visitors is around eight thousand in normal times, the public will be limited to eight hundred people, for a ratio of forty every ten minutes, and the site will close at 6.15 p.m., compared to 11 p.m. outside the pandemic period.
Since the sacking of the monument in December 2018 by yellow vests, everything is back to normal, we are assured.
Symbol of this episode, the plaster of
La
Marseillaise
by François Rude had been vandalized.
It has been completely restored.
The process could also be followed from day to day by visitors to the site.
This bust, called
The Departure of the Volunteers
and vandalized during a demonstration of yellow vests, had been commissioned by King Louis-Philippe in 1936, the date of the inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe.
Lou Fritel
Read also: Arc de triomphe: the sackers sentenced to suspended sentences and community service
Accompanied by her two young boys, Gwenaelle made the trip from the town of Bondoufle, in Essonne. On this Wednesday, the children do not have school. The reopening of cultural venues gave them the opportunity to develop a busy program:
“This morning, we were at the Atelier des Lumières. Then we went to see
the Geluck exhibition
, on the Champs-Élysées, then
Julien Marinetti's
open-air totems on the
Place de la Concorde. The Arc de Triomphe is the final touch! ”
Suffice to say that, unlike the other visitors met, the mother of the family took care to reserve her places.
