Anne Hidalgo wants the ten statues of the female figures from the opening of the Olympic Games to be installed in the 18th arrondissement

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo stated on Friday, September 6, during a press conference attended by the Sports Directorate of Radio France, that she wants to install in the 18th arrondissement the ten statues that appeared during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

During the ceremony, a tribute was paid to ten great female figures in the history of France, through ten statues that emerged from the water at the Pont Alexandre-III. These included Olympe de Gouges, Alice Milliat, Gisèle Halimi and Simone Veil. The socialist mayor hopes that these statues will become permanent and will be placed on rue de la Chapelle, in the north of the capital.

However, three municipalities in Loire-Atlantique have already raised their hands to the Games’ organizing committee to host the statues. Saint-Nazaire is particularly hoping to obtain the statue of Simone Veil, in the name of women’s fight to freely dispose of their bodies. La Baule and Le Croisic, for their part, are competing for another figure, that of the sportswoman and Nantaise Alice Milliat, who is also the organizer of the first Women’s World Games in 1922.

During this press conference, the mayor of Paris also declared that she wanted to increase the tourist tax to finance the accessibility of the Paris metro. A solution, according to her, to avoid increasing taxes for Parisians.

Anne Hidalgo assures that she has not received any feedback from the State “for now”during this press conference attended by the Sports Department of Radio France. The Ile-de-France region, the city of Paris and the APF-France Handicap association signed a pact on Thursday, September 5 for a metro accessible to people with reduced mobility. This project, estimated at between 15 and 20 billion euros, could last 20 years.