'Paris will be wrecked by the Olympic Games'

Locals in the French capital have been pushed to the edge by intense traffic, the closure of bridges and metro stations, and 6ft barriers lining the streets in preparation for the upcoming Games. No wonder they're fleeing the city

- Agnès Poirier

LIT in Olympia on April 16, travelling on the 130-yearold, three-masted barque Belem from Athens to Marseilles, the Olympic flame reached France on May 8, and from there, made its way slowly up north to Paris. Everywhere it passed, it brought smiles. Almost as a harbinger of joy, a much welcome feeling in a country derailed by surprise parliamentary elections only a few weeks ago. On Bastille Day, the Olympic flame arrived in Paris on horseback, proudly carried by Colonel Thibault Vallette, gold medal equestrian at the Rio Games of 2016. There followed two days of frantic sightseeing for the flame. If only it could talk and give us its impressions.

Among other highlights, the flame was paraded by a beaming Thierry Henry while jogging down the ChampsElysées. It was later held high by Paris ballerinas from Bastille to the Louvre museum, where the former étoile dancer of the Paris Opéra, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, took it to see the Mona Lisa and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. From there, to the Sorbonne and then Notre-Dame where firemen who saved the cathedral from the blaze in 2019 brandished the flame with panache. My heart melted twice, first, when the Moulin Rouge belles danced the French Cancan for the flame right in the middle of Pigalle, and then when it entered Victor Hugo’s house, in the heart of the Marais. The flame visiting France’s eternal glories is a beautiful thing to see.

There is something about seeing the Olympic flame jogging past you that soothes the soul and calms the nerves. A welcome interlude in Parisians’ lives after months, if not years, of works in the streets of the capital in preparation for the Games. Parisians needed it, and badly. “It’s so good to smile again,” said the waiter at café Saint Regis on the tip of the Île Saint-Louis, overlooking Notre-Dame’s flying buttresses.