The
Olympic Games in Paris
excite its mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and
exasperate Parisians.
They are looking to rent their apartments
for
several thousand euros per week and escape from an avalanche of 15 million sports tourists, who will flood the city between July 26 and August 11, the height of European summer.
Parisians traditionally leave the French capital to tourists in July and August and go on vacation.
This year seems to be no different.
To avoid Madame
Hidalgo 's odious traffic restrictions
and attracted by the rising rental prices during the Games, which can reach 30,000 euros a week, many Parisians have listed their homes on Airbnb for the summer holidays.
Fireworks light up the sky next to the Eiffel Tower.
Photo: EFE
But Anne Hidalgo, the city's socialist mayor, has other ideas.
"Paris will be magnificent. Don't leave this one, they'll see. That would be stupid," she said.
Just as she inaugurated the new Adidas Arena, an Olympic venue in Porte de la Chapelle,
a decadent and dangerous district in the north of Paris
, where drug addicts and homeless migrants live.
“We will enjoy the excitement together.
This is really the beginning of the Olympic magic,” the mayor of Sevillian origin harangued.
Paris with closed restaurants?
Hidalgo's attempt to win over Parisians comes amid growing concern among restaurant owners about losing a lot of money in their businesses.
Sports tourists will come with
“low cost”
budgets , they will prefer fast foods and they will lose their usual clients of the year or
high-consumption tourism.
More than 15 million visitors are expected.
But restaurant owners fear that, after paying high prices for tickets to the Games,
their budgets will not stretch beyond fast food.
The concerns may be justified: London restaurants lost business during the 2012 Olympics.
There is no Olympic fever
Many Parisians say they are more concerned about crowding and higher public transportation fares during the event than about Olympic fever.
Surveys suggest that around a fifth of the capital's residents would be willing to rent their homes during the Games, when the price of some flats
has risen six-fold.
No delivery
Despite claims from Hidalgo and President Emmanuel Macron that the City of Light is preparing for
“a moment of collective joy,”
the mood has been further soured by instructions to residents to avoid having packages delivered. delivery or move house during the Games.
The mayor will make life difficult for the regular residents and
there will be a higher tax on anyone who rents the house at astronomical prices.
A postcard of the Seine.
Behind the Eiffel Tower.
Photo: Eric Feferberg / AFP
Security measures are also expected to cause disruption.
Police will restrict entry to some areas, especially during
the opening ceremony along the Seine
in central Paris on July 26.
Parisians have bought tickets
Yet despite the complaints, the French (and Parisians in particular)
have snapped up about 64 percent of the nearly eight million
Olympic tickets already sold.
Most of the remaining 36 percent has been bought by
the British, Americans and Germans.
"We were afraid that the French public would be slow to react," said Damien Rajot of the organizing committee.
"But this is not the case at all: people clearly want to be part of this."
The risk of 19th century balconies
Plans for the opening ceremony on July 26 include a water show in which more than 10,000 athletes and national officials will sail down the Seine in some 160 boats.
They will be watched from the banks of the river by 300,000 spectators.
The opening ceremony in the waters of the Seine River will be spectacular. But it has created a new urban security problem:
the state of these century-old balconies that overlook the river
and that will not be able to support the weight of those who rent them to watch the ceremony.
The opening ceremony in the waters of the Seine River will be spectacular.
Photo: AP
In principle, the balconies of Parisian buildings from the Haussmann period
at the end of the 19th century
should support 350 kg/m2.
The equivalent of about three adults.
But authorities fear that poor maintenance and overcrowding could cause
some to give in.
A property industry body has said that balconies, often in buildings that are more than 150 years old
, may not be able to withstand the strain.
The old balconies of Paris "
represent a risk to the crowds
attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games," warn the architects.
Four people died in the town of Angers, western France, in 2016 when a balcony collapsed during a party, while in May last year, two people were seriously injured when a balustrade and part of a balcony collapsed in the district. 15 Paris.
Paris authorities are debating whether to order an inspection of the balconies and balustrades
of thousands of buildings lining the Seine River.
"It's clearly a scenario that could happen," Olivier Princivalle of the real estate professionals association FNAIM told Agence France-Presse, adding that the issue had recently been raised in a regular preparatory meeting with police and city hall officials.
Paris police and city hall have confirmed that the matter, which theoretically affects several thousand buildings along the ceremony's 6-kilometer route, was under discussion.
But no decision has yet been made, and the cost of a full structural inspection has been seen as
prohibitive.
The
bouquinistes
were saved
The Olympic Games have put old Parisian traditions at risk.
The
Bouquinistes
, who
sold old books and posters in their traditional green boxes on the Seine 400 years ago
, were under threat of disappearing for security reasons at the Olympics.
President Emmanuel Macron had to intervene
to stop Hidalgo.
The president said he considered them
part of the “living heritage of the capital.”
Booksellers on the banks of the Seine.
Photo: STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
Last summer, police told booksellers that for “obvious security reasons,”
570 of the
bouquinistes
' stalls
– around 60% of the total – would have to be temporarily relocated to a special “booksellers' village” during the duration of the Games.
Booksellers have actively campaigned to keep their green boxes in place, even if they have to be closed during the opening ceremony, saying they are as much a part of Paris as the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral.
The Elysée Palace said the French president had instructed officials to ensure that security measures for the ceremony were adapted to allow bouquinistes
,
who have been selling second-hand books on the docks of the Seine for centuries, to stay.