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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris wants to keep balloon and Olympic landmarks after Games

Paris will explore ways to keep on display popular landmarks adorning the French capital for the Olympics even after the Games are over, including the rings on the Eiffel Tower and the hot air balloon tethered to the Olympic cauldron, its mayor said on Monday.

Published: 29 July 2024 13:50 CEST
Paris wants to keep balloon and Olympic landmarks after Games
The Olympic cauldron is lit with the Olympic flame as it flies above Paris while attached to a balloon on July 28, 2024, as seen from the Eiffel Tower. (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / POOL / AFP)

Anne Hidalgo told the France Bleu broadcaster that she hoped a hugely popular hot air balloon in the Tuileries gardens could find a permanent home in Paris, as could the statues of 10 French women that were part of the Olympics opening ceremony last week.

“We should explore possibilities for these three symbols,” Hidalgo said. “These three artistic, symbolic and magnificent objects deserve our full attention.”

Hidalgo acknowledged, however, that any decision to keep them on display was not hers alone “so I cannot promise today that they will stay”.

Deputy mayor Pierre Rabadan meanwhile said that keeping the Olympic rings in place was “technically difficult”. Questioned by AFP, he added that “suitable spots” would have to be found for the floating hot air balloon and the statues.

The cauldron forming the base of the balloon was lit on Friday by Marie-Jose Perec, France’s greatest track athlete, and judo triple gold medallist Teddy Riner.

Visitors have since been lining up to see it, with all reservable slots taken for the duration of the Games. Some 10,000 people are being admitted daily.

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How many of the French references did you get in the Olympics opening ceremony?

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics wasn't just a spectacular event, it was also packed with references to French culture, art and history - did you get them all?

Published: 29 July 2024 14:26 CEST
How many of the French references did you get in the Olympics opening ceremony?

The Paris 2024 Olympics were officially opened on Friday with a spectacular – and long – ceremony. Held along a 6km course along the River Seine in central Paris, it was the first time that an opening ceremony had been held outside the stadium.

The event was very different to more traditional ceremonies but seems to have gone down well with the French, with polls showing that 85 percent of people thought it had been a success (and it also annoyed a few people, we’ll get to that later).

But the ceremony was also stuffed with references to French history, French art and French culture – here’s a quick rundown so you can impress your French friends.

(This is a non-exhaustive list, feel free to share other interesting moments in the comments section below).

The mysterious masked runner and torchbearer in the opening ceremony. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP

The masked runner

The freerunner or parkour specialist could be seen running over the rooftops carrying the Olympic torch while the parade of athlete-carrying boats was going on along the River Seine.

Paris has a very distinctive skyline with the zinc-topped buildings making it instantly recognisable, but the masked runner here is a reference to the video game Assassin’s Creed – he is a tribute to the character of Arno Dorian from the saga, whose ‘Creed Unity’ instalment is set in the capital.

The hugely successful Assassin’s Creed series was developed by the French firm Ubisoft, and France has a large video games industry. 

It’s been suggested that the mask is also a nod to one of the most mysterious characters in French history; the man in the iron mask.

Cabaret

An easy reference this, but US pop superstar Lady Gaga was singing in a cabaret style, in reference to Paris’ tradition of cabaret acts. She sang ‘Mon truc en plume’, by Zizi Jeanmarie.

Shortly afterwards dancers along the banks of the Seine performed the cancan, the iconic dance associated with the most famous cabaret venue of all, the Moulin Rouge.

Pink

The cancan dancers were dressed in pink but did you also spot the pink-clad rugby players along the river bank? Their outfit references the Paris-based rugby club Stade Français, known for their pink jerseys.

The club itself was founded in 1883 and has numerous famous alumni including Roland Garros. They have played in pink since 2005, one of the few professional sports clubs to embrace the colour.

Notre Dame dancers

A short film of builders – who later turned out to be dancers – on scaffolding references the ongoing work on Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral.

A devastating fire in 2019 severely damaged the roof and destroyed the spire. The original hope was for it to be restored in time for the Olympics. In the event that didn’t quite happen – the spire has been restored and the roof repaired but the cathedral itself will not reopen to visitors until December 2024. 

Gold and ballet

The fluttering gold canopy that formed the backdrop for the ballet section references France’s ‘sun king’ Louis XIV. But as well as being le roi soleil, Louis was also the ‘dance king’ – setting up France’s royal academy of dance which takes credit for codifying the art of ballet (explaining why so many ballet terms are French).

Taking part in the dance section were dancers from five French ballet companies and a star ballerina from the Paris Opéra.

Revolution 

Talk about French history to non-French people and probably the first thing they will say is French Revolution, so the ceremony couldn’t possibly have missed out this.

But in fact this section references several turbulent and revolutionary periods in French history.

We see a tableau recreating Eugene Delacroix’s famous painting La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty leading the people) – although often used as a shorthand representation of the French Revolution, the painting was actually done in 1830 and commemorates the July Revolution that toppled the briefly restored French monarchy.

We then take a brief detour into a theatre where a cast is rehearsing Les Misérables. Based on Victor Hugo’s novel this piece is in fact set during the Paris Commune of 1870, not the Revolution of 1789.

Marie Antoinette

The actual Revolution nod is the appearance of Marie Antoinette. The figure representing her appears at the window of the Conciergerie, the riverside prison where she was held in 1793. Her fate is prefigured by the fact the the figure is headless but in fact she was not executed at the Conciergerie, she was beheaded by guillotine at the Place de la Révolution (now named Place de la Concorde, which during the Olympics will be hosting the urban sports events).

Heavy metal and a boat

The French band Gojira are a big name on the metal scene but their inclusion had another reference – it was part of a tribute to the victims of the Bataclan attack, since the band Eagles of Death Metal were playing on the night of the terror attack at the Bataclan in 2015.

As they play a model boat passes – the boat is designed to look like the one in the crest for the city of Paris and bears the city’s motto Fluctuat nec mergitur. The motto loosely translates as ‘tossed by the storm but not destroyed’ and since 2015 has been adopted as a symbol of the city’s resilience in the face of repeated terror attacks.

Love triangles

Standing in the boat is an opera singer performing a selection from French composer Bizet’s opera Carmen. The opera tells the story of the naive soldier Don José who loves the beautiful Carmen – yet she in her turn is obsessed by glamorous bullfighter Escamillo. It does not end well (name an opera that does have a happy ending).

This segues into a scene at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French national library) involving three people who also appear to be in a complicated romantic situation – this references numerous love triangles (un trouple in French) in French books, plays and films, from Cyrano de Bergerac to Jules et Jim.

That beautiful library seen in the video is also open to visitors.

Mona Lisa

One of the most famous paintings in the world, the Mona Lisa gets a rough ride in the opening ceremony and ends up being chucked into the Seine.

The real painting is on display in the Louvre (at least we assume that the painting now at the bottom of the river is a replica) and this sequence refers to the famous theft of the painting from the museum in 1911.

In the ceremony, the art thieves are the Minions from the Despicable Me film, the creatures originally animated by the Paris-based studio Mac Guff. They appear right after a clip from one of the first films ever made, tracing the history of cinema from its invention by the Lumière brothers to the present days.  

Aya Nakamura and the Garde républicaine

French-Malian pop star Aya Nakamura is the biggest selling female francophone artist in the world. You might think her inclusion in the opening ceremony would therefore be a no-brainer but when news of her involvement leaked a few months in advance it led to an ugly controversy in which far-right figures said that she would ’embarrass’ France because of her habit of mixing up French, slang terms and Malian patois in her songs.

Not only did she sing, but she also danced with the Garde républicaine, the army unit that provides honour guards for France’s most formal ceremonies. The act represented the marriage of the old, traditional France and and the modern era. It is worth noting her performance took place in front of the Académie Française, the French ‘guardians’ of the French language.

‘Last Supper’ or Dionysis

OK we had to get there in the end – this is the part of the ceremony that appears to have caused some controversy – it’s a tableau created by dancers, drag queens and a DJ.

The controversy arose because some Christian groups say the image looks like Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, a depiction that they found offensive.

The ceremony’s creative director Thomas Jolly says the scene is supposed to represent a gathering of Greek Gods – a nod to the origins of the Olympics in ancient Greece and their roots as a religious festival.

Later in the scene the French actor Philippe Katerine appears almost naked and painted blue with a garland of flowers – he represents Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and pleasure.

Fashion and the LV suitcase 

Paris is proud of its fashion – the industry directly employs 1 million people in France and represents around three percent of the country’s GDP. The fashion show sequance is a nod to this with the branding coming from the French fashion giant (and major sponsor of the Games) LVMH which includes brands Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Céline.

Some have suggested that the sequence with the huge Louis Vuitton suitcases represents one of the most bizarre episodes in recent French legal history – when the French Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn was smuggled out of Japan in a suitcase (this has not been confirmed by organisers).

Ghostly horse

One of the most eerie moments was the ghostly mechanical horse galloping down the Seine with the Olympic-flag-wrapped rider on its back.

It was not Death on the horse, but rather a representation of Sequana, the goddess of the Seine, who was worshipped by pre-Roman Gaulish tribes. 

The cauldron, with the Olympic flame lit, lifts off while attached to a balloon. Photo by Luis TATO / AFP

Flame

The lighting of the Olympic flame is always the big moment of any opening ceremony and this was certainly true for Paris. The flame is contained in the basket of a hot-air balloon suspended over the Tuileries gardens in central Paris.

The first piloted hot-air balloon flight took place in Paris in 1783, the new contraption invented by brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, while the first flight in a hydrogen-filled balloon took off from the Jardin des Tuileries.

Celine Dion 

The ceremony closed with a spectacular performance by Celine Dion, given from the Eiffel Tower – her first public performance in almost five years.

The Canadian singer, who is massively popular in France, has been battling serious health problems in recent years. She sang Hymne à l’Amour by French icon Edith Piaf – another singer who fought on through major health issues to perform during her final years.

Playlist

Speaking of music, there was a lot of it during the opening ceremony, you can hear the full set on the below playlist.

Enjoy!

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