The mayor of Paris announces that the famous Olympic rings attached to the Eiffel Tower in June will remain in place after the Paralympic Games.
The Olympic rings will “remain on the Eiffel Tower” after the Paralympic Games are over, Paris PS mayor Anne Hidalgo announced in an interview with the daily newspaper on Saturday. West of France.
“As mayor of Paris, the decision is up to me and I have the agreement of the IOC. So yes, they will remain on the Eiffel Tower,” she explains about the five rings, hung at the beginning of June on the emblematic monument. of the capital.
New rings, “just as big but lighter”, will be fixed “as soon as possible” on the iron tower, the rings currently installed are “too heavy” to “last in the long term”, she states. The elected socialist also expresses her desire to install along the rue de la Chapelle, a “symbolic place” in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, the statues of the ten French women who appeared on the Seine during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
“Paris will never be the same”
“It is a major street that goes to Saint-Denis and the basilica of the kings of France. It's a powerful symbol, I spoke to Tony Estanguet, who thinks the idea is excellent,” she adds.
If the chosen one also reaffirms her desire to see the Olympic cauldron, “an inseparable object of the Paris Games”, maintained at the Tuileries, the decision still rests with the President of the Republic, the location being the property of the state.
A few days after the launch of the Paralympic Games (August 28-September 8), the mayor of the host city expressed his delight “that the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the event.
“Paris will never be the same,” she assures as she takes stock of the Games, before recalling their “legacy” left in the capital, including open water swimming in the Seine, which should be authorized on the Marie Arme, in Bercy or even on the Grenelle arm by the summer of 2025.