What objects inherited from the Paris Games could enrich the already sumptuous heritage of the City of Lights? Parisians, visitors and the entire world have been ecstatic about the weightless Olympic cauldron since the opening of the Olympics. Many never tire of seeing it rise into the Parisian sky, an image now immortalized by a postage stamp, and would like to keep it.
The mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo, shares the general enthusiasm of her fellow citizens. She is not the only politician to wish for it, just as the cauldron is not the only object linked to the Olympic Games that interests people. Attention is also focused on the Olympic rings fixed to the Eiffel Tower or the ten female figures discovered during the “Sorority” tableau of the opening ceremony. The debate has begun and several hypotheses have already been put forward by the Parisian mayor. Franceinfo Culture takes stock of what we know.
For the Olympic cauldron
The Olympic cauldron, which Olympic medalists Marie-José Pérec and Teddy Riner set ablaze on July 26, 2024 at 11:24 p.m. at the end of the breathtaking opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, has taken up residence in the Jardin des Tuileries. This is not the first time that Paris has been enchanted by a hot air balloon installed in this Parisian space, which has always been the ideal place to welcome hot air balloons, as the INA reminds us.I think there is some evidence that a balloon is located (at the Tuileries)“said Mathieu Lehanneur, who designed the object, on Saturday July 28 on RMC Sports.The 7 m diameter flame ring he designed is carried by a 30 m high golden balloon. After careful weather checks, she takes offevery evening 60 m above the ground.
Asked about the possibility of keeping her, Anne Hidalgo indicated on the 8 p.m. news on August 7 of France 2 that the decision was not her responsibility. However, she took the necessary steps with the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, because the site that houses the cauldron belongs to the State. She told him “immediately written”. In the program “Quels Jeux!” on France 2, on July 30, Anne Hidalgo already indicated her intention to propose to the President of the Republic to “work together” on “a number of heritage objects from these Games (concerning) our common heritage”.
On the 8pm news set, she repeated again that she was ““I am really very keen to keep this symbol of the Games in this place because elsewhere, it would not have the same meaning.”. Implicit response to plan B proposed by Valérie Pécresse, lthe president of the Ile-de-France region. While the latter is obviously in favor of keeping the cauldron at the Tuileries, she can just as easily imagine it in the Parc de la Villette in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. “I think its place is in the Tuileries. Now, if we have to move it, we’ll find a place,” declared the regional president on France Inter on August 5. “At La Villette, perhaps”she added.
For the time being, the request from the mayor of Paris is under consideration. “We will look at all of this in due course, with obviously the technical analyses, feasibility analyses, perspective analyses too, because we must preserve the historic views of Paris.the head of state said on August 2, reports AFP. “Maybe the basin will also be part of the inheritance. I can’t tell you today,” he added. “Anything we can do to keep the city more beautiful over time is something we need to think about.”
The flame ring, which currently adorns the Parisian sky, is composed of “40 projectors with a luminous power equivalent to 4 million lumens and 200 high-pressure misting nozzles” which produce ‘a flame‘without fuel, made of water and light’, can be read on the website of the French energy supplier EDF. The device which allows this “100% electric flame” to exist consumes 3 m3 of water per hour when the basin is in flight. A consumption which increases to 2 m3 on the ground.
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Although he is also in favor of maintaining the basin, Mathieu Lehanneur recalled a principle of reality in a recent exchange with The Parisian : “If (the basin) “The rest, she cannot keep the flame since the Olympic flame must be extinguished,” unchanging ritual for centuries. Noting that the first people to have raised the idea of keeping it were its visitors, the designer stressed that the device was never intended to remain even if it is “technically” possible by adapting “two or three things.”
In The Teamin an interview published on August 9, he further clarifies his thinking. “If we can’t keep the flame alive, can’t we just keep a vibrant memory that will stay in our minds rather than a relic that will get caught in the rain?” He imagines “an in-between: the flame is no longer there but we maintain a play of lights, so that it can continue to take off from time to time but not every evening.” Paris would therefore have its second balloon after that of the André Citroën park located in the 15th arrondissement.
For the rings hanging on the Eiffel Tower
The giant rings of the Olympics are called the “Spectaculars” and “It was hard to be more spectacular than the Eiffel Tower,” rejoiced Tony Estanguet, president of Paris 2024, when they were installed. The five rings of the Olympic emblem were fixed on the night of 6 to 7 June by the teams of the steel group ArcelorMittal. Four cranes and around thirty people were needed to attach the “Spectaculars” to the Iron Lady. In Paris, they are 29 m wide, 13 m high and weigh about 30 tons. Each ring has a diameter of 9 m.
The mayor of Paris would like “a lot” also keep the rings on the Eiffel Tower but “We have to look technically to see if it is possible or not because they are hooked.” These are “several tons of metal”, she said in “What Games!”.
At each edition, the Olympic rings take place in an iconic location in the host city : Tower Bridge in London in 2012, Madureira Park in Rio in 2016, Odaiba Bay in Tokyo in 2020. If Paris kept its rings, it would follow in the footsteps of the city of Innsbruck, which hosted the Games in 1964. This would be a first in sixty years. years.
For the ten “Golden Women” of the opening ceremony
The “Golden Women”*, that is ten statues of prominent female figures in French history were unveiled in tableau number 6 named “Sorority” during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Deployed at the level of the Pont Alexandre-III, inherited from the Universal Exhibition and located near the National Assembly, these statues constitute “symbolically” a response to the representations of men that adorn the Parliament building. The French organization of the Games stressed that 260 statues occupied the Parisian public space compared to around forty for women.
This is a topic “less complicated”, according to Anne Hidalgo in this heritage section of the Games’ legacy. Firstly because these figurines were de facto offered to Paris. Then because the elected official knows exactly what she wants: to make statues of them “which can be placed along rue de la Chapelle”in this 18th century district Paris district renovated for the Games. Its residents would then regularly see portraits of Olympe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791, of the rower Alice Milliat who organized the Women’s World Games, or of Paulette Nardal, a Martinican woman of letters and patron of Négritude. Anne Hidalgo is already in contact with Éric Lejoindre, the mayor of the district, she said on the show “Quels Jeux!”.
For other Olympic treasures
The cultural legacy of the Games will also be the statue created by the American sculptor Alison Saar. Parisians have already been enjoying it since the 23rd June. Its installation is the result of an Olympic tradition between the city that hosts the Games and the one that succeeds it. It is Los Angeles, where Alison Saar lives, that will host the Olympic Games in 2028. Similarly, 14 posters inspired by the Games, created by seven artists within the framework of the Cultural Olympiad have been created. They will be the subject of a traveling exhibition in France.
*The list of ten “Golden Women”
Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791
Alice Milliat (1884-1957)French rower and sportswoman, at the origin of the first Women’s World Games in 1922
Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)Franco-Tunisian lawyer, activist and politician, emblematic figure of feminism and anti-colonialism
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)philosopher, writer, emblematic figure of feminism and author of one of its major books, The Second Sex
Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)intellectual, journalist and writer from Martinique, little-known figure of the Negritude movement
Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)first woman to have traveled around the world
Louise Michel (1830-1905)anarchist and heroine of the Paris Commune of 1871
Christina of Pisan (1364-1431)one of the first professional women of letters who championed the cause of women
Alice Guy (1873-1968)one of the world’s first female film directors, screenwriters and producers
Simone Veil (1927-2017)Holocaust survivor, politician and ardent defender of women’s rights