If swimming in the River Seine in Paris was on your bucket list this summer, but you thought you might have missed the boat, don’t worry — there’s still time.
The city will extend its experiment with public bathing in the river for two more weeks, until mid-September, Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Wednesday.
Around 100,000 people have taken the plunge since the river was reopened to swimming on July 5 after a century-long ban, she said.
“Given this exceptional success, I have decided to extend the opening,” Ms. Hidalgo said in a post on social media.
The swimming site at Grenelle, just downstream from the Eiffel Tower, will stay open until Sept. 7. A second location at Bercy, which is under a footbridge named after the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, will remain open until Sept. 14, and will open again the weekend of Sept. 20-21, Ms. Hidalgo said.
“This is excellent news for all those who have made it their summer appointment and a final opportunity for those who haven’t yet had the chance to swim,” she said.
A third site, near the Île Saint-Louis, a small island in the river near Notre-Dame, will close as scheduled at the end of August, the city’s deputy mayor in charge of sports, Pierre Rabadan, said in an interview.
The reason the river had been closed to swimming since 1923 was simple: filth. The Seine, like many European rivers that run through cities, was so polluted that entering it was a health risk. Boat traffic posed an additional hazard.
Last year’s Summer Olympics propelled its revival. France spent 1.4 billion euros, or more than $1.6 billion, on preparations, and rehabilitating the river was among them. The men’s and women’s 10-kilometer marathon swimming races were held in the Seine, as well as the swim portion of the triathlon.
Opening the river for public bathing was an additional sweetener for Parisians who, before the Games, had been skeptical about its value to a city already bursting with tourists. It may have helped: Many Parisians rated the Olympics a success.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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