On July 14 at 3 p.m., like every second Sunday in July at 3 p.m. for more than twenty years, men, women, alone or with family, elected officials, in swimsuits, briefs or swimming trunks, will dive headfirst into the rivers and streams of Europe. To hell with the ban, the banners will be out again – “Let’s dare to swim in the Marne”, “Essonne flows into the water”, “I want to be able to swim again”. The photos will circulate, the authorities will observe. With the promise of meeting again in a year, same day, same time, for the next European “Big Jump”.
But, in 2025, the atmosphere on the banks of the Seine and the banks of the Marne, in Ile-de-France, could change. Rather than demanding, activists in swimming trunks could celebrate what they have been waiting for for so many years: the return of swimming in the region’s two main rivers. A meeting was held on March 21 at the regional prefecture, under the chairmanship of the prefect, Marc Guillaume, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor (Socialist Party) of Paris, and the president of the Greater Paris metropolis, Patrick Ollier (The Republicans). In the presence of numerous elected officials (mayors, department presidents), all three drew up the list of 32 sites – 28 in the metropolis, three in Essonne, one in Seine-et-Marne – where swimming will soon be authorized again.
The Parisian Urban Planning Workshop (APUR) drew up an inventory and studied its feasibility. Swimming at the Pont de Grenelle, the Pont de Bercy and the Pont Marie, in Paris, could be the first to be inaugurated, in 2025, as well as certain sites on the Saint-Maur-des-Fossés loop (Val-de-Fossés). Marne), where the Marne is closed to commercial navigation after the port of Bonneuil. The aptly named “rue de la Baignade” And “Beach Street” would then regain all their meaning.
The general public has lost the use of the river
It has been more than a century, since the prefectural decree of 1923, that people have no longer bathed in the Seine. Cohabitation with the boats was too dangerous, the water was not really clean either. In the Marne, the ban dates from 1970. This does not prevent wild swimming, the organization of rare sporting events (the Paris triathlon until 2012, a test for the Olympics and a high-flying diving competition in 2023), and the exception in Seine-et-Marne, in Meaux, where residents have been swimming in the Marne since 2007. But for the rest, the general public has lost the use of the river. The taverns, which made the workers and employees of the Belle Epoque dance, have closed and are more numerous in painting at the Musée d’Orsay than in the open air.
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