Paris 2024 Olympic Games: what should the opening ceremony on the Seine look like?

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are fastapproaching , culminating in the opening ceremony on July 26, 2024, an unprecedented event, for the first time organized outside the confines of a stadium. This time, the ceremony will take place on the banks of the Seine, causing a number of inconveniences for tourists and residents of Paris on that day. In January, the artistic director of the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, Thomas Jolly, revealed to AFP a few details about this well-kept ceremony.

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Organized as a river parade, the three-hour show will take place both on the river and on the quays, over a distance of almost six kilometers. Several hundred artists from the circus, dance, visual arts and music worlds will take part in the show, which will feature a dozen tableaux based on French heritage,"from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Trocadéro".

Around a hundred boats will be used to transport the delegations of athletes through these tableaux. A tribute to Notre-Dame de Paris is also planned, to celebrate the cathedral's reopening at the end of the year. In terms of the themes and messages conveyed by the ceremony, Thomas Jolly wanted to tell "a story of what France is all about" through the monuments skirted,"so that everyone feels represented".

During this far from classic ceremony, protocol elements will be integrated with 45 minutes of artistic show and two hours of parade, for"a great homogeneous celebration". The show is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m., so as to draw on "the natural light of the setting sun with all its nuances" , and will end at around 11 p.m., with the lighting of the flame at the Trocadéro.

Paris 2024 opening ceremony: the number of spectators on the quays of the Seine has finally been reduced
In the end, there won't be 500,000 people on the quays of the Seine for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The capacity has been revised downwards to almost 200,000 fewer! [Read more]