© Ugo Gattoni / Paris 2024

The sight of a blaze on the Seine has historically boded ill, from the conflagration of Pont Marchant in 1621 to that of Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019, by way of the setting of fire on the Palais des Tuileries by men from the Commune. But Paris will on 26 July burn in bliss with the flames of Olympia, which for the first time ever will kick off the Games not from a stadium but from the very heart of the host city: a river in this case, a scene of grandeur with no equal which the organizers have had the insight to clean up and turn into the star of the opening ceremony. So the traditional parade of athletes will take place on boats sailing from Pont d’Austerlitz to Pont d’Iéna, flanked by the capital’s principal monuments, to end in a very French and pyrotecnnic festivity with the Eiffel Tower as backdrop.

While the bowl containing the Olympic Torch in the Tuileries Gardens flares (again not in a stadium), sites like the Esplanade des Invalides, the Place de la Concorde, and the Grand Palais will see tourists replaced by sport competitors, and the postcard city will be the setting of sporting events. Meanwhile, at the Palais Bourbon, fires will crackle and scorch too, of the kind that are harder to extinguish: the battles of a National Assembly dominated by the New Popular Front of leftists that includes the Insoumise leader Mélenchon, whose victory in the legislative elections forestalled Macron’s fall and prevented (or postponed) the triumph of Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. The term is bound to be tense, but it starts with an Olympic truce that may just calm things down.

Jours de fête