I swam in the Seine on Saturday.
I dived in near the heart of Paris — the elegant ancient mansions of Île Saint-Louis rising above me, and the Seine’s stone bridges stretching into the distance. A crowd splashed around me, giggling with pleasure and wonder.
“What a joy. What a joy,” said Martine Laupin, 76, breast-stroking nearby. “This is Paris. Imagine!”
Swimming has been banned in the river since 1923 because of boat traffic and pollution. France promised to clean up the pollution, and on Saturday it delivered, opening three dedicated bathing sites in Paris. Two sites were also opened in the Marne River, a tributary a few miles upstream, in the southern Parisian suburbs.
The water was green and silky. A gentle current pulled me along a line of orange buoys marking the official swim zone. I took a breath and dived under. It was warm.
A green flag hung on a pole nearby, signaling that the latest water-quality tests, taken two hours before, had come back clear.
A study in the 1990s classified the stretch of river running through Paris as having one of the highest levels of heavy metal in the world, according to a history of the river. Now it is clean enough for humans to swim in. In a world of grim news, this is cause for celebration.
We can thank the Olympics.
One way to persuade Parisians to put up with all the tourists and traffic of last summer’s Games was to promise to make the Seine swimmable. Organizers vowed to clean its waters enough to host the triathlon and marathon swim events, and then, a year later, to open swimming spots for locals. To do that required an Olympic amount of money — a budget of 1.4 billion euros, or $1.65 billion — and a dizzying array of projects.
Workers built huge underground tanks to capture water during storms so that sewers didn’t empty into the Seine. They added new chemical and ultraviolet treatments at the outflows of upstream sewage treatment plants. They connected some 180 houseboats stretched along the riverbanks to the wastewater system so they no longer dumped waste into the river.
Government workers went door to door, persuading some 8,000 upstream property owners to convert their old, faulty pipes to ensure they were no longer dumping into the river.
After a rocky start, the result impressed many Parisians, who have perfected the art of cynicism.
During the Olympic triathlon last summer, I stood on the Seine’s banks near the gold statues glowing along Alexander III Bridge to watch the female swimmers glide by in a strong current. Three young professionals who had stopped on their way to work stood near me. Two said they had doubted the project. But after the Olympic authorities published what they said were “very good” water quality test results, all three vowed to dive in as soon as possible.
In the year since, the government has continued cleaning up the water, fixing another 2,000 faulty pipes.
“You’ll see this year, the results are going to be even better,” said Marc Guillaume, a top government official for the Paris region, adding that a delegation from Mississippi had recently visited to glean advice.
Regular tests throughout June for E. coli and intestinal enterococci, bacteria that can cause illness in humans and are used as indicators of fecal contamination, revealed that the water at the three sites was safe to swim in around 80 to 93 percent of the time based on European standards, according to Paul Kennouche, a microbiologist who heads the city’s water quality department. He said a 17-person team was monitoring the water quality every two hours every day of the week.
Still, a big rainstorm will cause spikes in bacteria levels and the sites will be shut down — and red flags hoisted — until tests come back clear again, organizers warn.
“We will be able to swim when nature tells us we can,” Mr. Guillaume said.
It is impossible to live in Paris and not be drawn to the Seine. It runs through the middle of the city, past historic palaces, grand museums and World Fair sites, including the Eiffel Tower. In winter’s gloomy nights, the lights of bridges and nearby buildings bounce along the river’s dark surface. During long summer evenings, when its waters glow a near-fluorescent blue, locals crowd along its banks for “apéros” — drinks and hors d’oeuvres. It’s a place of dreaming and celebrating.
As a swimmer, I have long wanted it to be a place for swimmers, no more so than this past week, when a heat dome settled over France, raising the temperature above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
A few days ago, I rode the subway south into the suburb of Maisons-Alfort to swim in the Marne. There, trees crowd the river’s sides and ducks dart along its edges. There were no signs of the sightseeing boats and delivery ships that charge up and down the Seine in Paris. The water was a murky green.
The swimming site was contained by docks on three sides, surveyed by security guards and lifeguards. Locals lay on lounge chairs on the bank under the trees.
Here, swimming was banned in 1970 because of pollution. I met Cathy Maria, a grandmother toweling off her two grandchildren, who told me she grew up swimming at this very site. “It’s a really beautiful experience,” she said.
Even in Paris, swimming in the Seine is a return to history. By the 1800s, the river was crowded with “four-cent baths,” Eugène Briffault wrote in his delightful 1844 book, “Paris in Water,” where most people descended the ladders “in a state of nature.”
For aristocrats, the river offered swimming clubs. These involved big boats with the center cut out to form open pools, where members might spend the day swimming, getting a pedicure, then lunching on steak frites and wine, before settling down on a lush carpet in the boat for an afternoon nap.
Reading the book, I wondered how Parisians’ relationship with their city might change now that swimming is again permitted.
Officials fear that locals will dive in wherever and whenever they like, an understandable worry, given the Parisian penchant for jaywalking and biking through red lights. They have repeated at news conferences that swimming is permitted only in the three designated, supervised spots.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a major force behind the Seine cleanup, said she hoped the experience would reconnect Parisians to something wild. She was inspired by her son Arthur Germain, who swam the Seine’s full length over 49 days in 2021. He cried when he crossed under the first bridge entering Paris, he said in an interview, overcome by the new perspective of buildings that formed the backdrop of his life.
“You can’t be more immersed in nature than when you are swimming,” he told me. “All your senses are awakened.”
Bobbing in the water, I thought of all the reasons I have fallen in love with Paris — the morning sunlight that bounces between ancient buildings, the competing exhibitions at museums, the reverence of literature to the point where even prisoners host a book prize. Now I have another.
It is a city that can achieve seemingly impossible things. It is a place where you can swim in the river.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
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