The city of Paris will have 26 festivities sites open to the public during the Olympic Games (July 26 – August 11), in addition to the Trocadéro gardens and the Parc de la Villette where the medal-winning athletes will be celebrated, the town hall announced on Tuesday. Free, these 26 fanzones will have on average “an instantaneous capacity of 500 people” and will be open until 11:00 p.m., the end of the events, broadcast live on giant screens, specified Pierre Rabadan, the deputy for sport and at the Olympic Games, during a press conference at City Hall.
In the end, no less than 26 free festivities sites open to all will enliven the capital. You will be able to experience sporting and cultural events there, watch the events or take advantage of a sustainable and local catering offer. pic.twitter.com/oRzU97IOxc
— Paris (@Paris) April 23, 2024
“The Games terrace”
Renamed “the Games terrace” because of a raised terrace that will be installed there, the square in front of the Town Hall will be open continuously from July 14 and the passage of the Olympic flame, a day during which it will be able to accommodate 6,000 people. The rest of the time, there will be 2,500 people who will be able to enter at the same time to “follow the events, play sports, attend many cultural events”, summarized the PS mayor. Anne Hidalgo.
All the arrondissements, except the 7th which “did not wish to organize one”, will have their site, specified the first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire who anticipates the “biggest party in the history of Paris”. The three Paris Plages sites – quays of the Seine right bank, La Villette basin and Canal Saint-Martin – will also offer broadcasts, sporting and cultural events. The Rosa Bonheur sur Seine barge, moored at Les Invalides, will host the “Pride House”, a fanzone dedicated to LGBT and their inclusion in sport.
“Champions Park”
Transformed into a “Champions Park” after the opening ceremony, the Trocadéro gardens will be the scene of a “parade of all the medalists from the day before”, in front of 13,500 people, explained Martin Fourcade, president of the athletes’ commission. of Paris 2024. This parade, which will bring together the medalists by discipline and not by delegation, will last one hour per day and will be “not a compulsory sequence” for the athletes, he told AFP. But “this is the only contact they will have with the public during the Games”, argued the five-time Olympic biathlon champion, anticipating a “magical moment”.
The same day as their medal, the athletes will go to the Parc de la Villette, transformed into a “Park of Nations” with the different national clubs. Ahead of the Olympics, a “district Olympics” will give Parisians the opportunity to “measure themselves through sport,” said Anne Hidalgo. The mayor still plans to swim in the Seine, before the Olympic events in the river, during a “big dive” which will be organized during a “window around June 23, or the following week”.