Seine finally opens for public swimming — but mind the rats

Times

04-07-2025

Parisians who are brave enough to take a plunge in the Seine as it opens for public swimming this weekend for the first time in a century will be reviving a once popular pastime.
Swimming in the Seine became fashionable in the 17th century, when Parisians would bathe in the river, with canvas screens separating men's and women's areas.
Paris banned swimming in the Seine in 1923 over concerns about water quality. After a €1.4 billion clean-up before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games last summer, which made it possible to hold some swimming races in the river, city officials have declared it safe.
It may still look a little murky, but swimming will be allowed at three designated points in Paris: Bras Marie, Bras de Grenelle near the Eiffel Tower, and Bercy. They have been equipped with showers and lockers, and, with the exception of the Bras Marie site, changing cubicles.
River swimming is a pet project of Anne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor, who took a five-minute dip in the Seine herself before the Olympics and deemed the water 'exquisite'.
'Swimming in the Seine is a response to the aim of adapting to climate change,' the mayor said just before this week's heatwave. 'The more temperatures rise, the more we will have to find spaces where people can cool off. This is also about the quality of life.'
The authorities say the three swimming areas will be closed if storms wash sewage or waste into the water, or if the currents are too strong.
Several Olympic swimmers became ill with vomiting or diarrhoea after competing in open water races in the river, although it was never proved that exposure to the Seine water was to blame.
'The issue of discharges into the river from houseboats and barges has never been settled,' Jean-Pierre Lecoq, the conservative mayor of Paris's sixth arrondissement, told The Times. 'They empty their toilets and the water from their kitchens into the Seine.
'That may not amount to a huge problem, but there's definitely a lot of muck down there, and then there are the rats. The water's too dark to see what's underneath. Personally, I love swimming in the sea but I wouldn't go swimming in the Seine in Paris.'
Many Parisians agree with him.
'Never ever would I swim in the Seine,' said Romain Verani, 35, who swims three times a week at a public pool. 'It's too hard to treat the water. The Seine is too big a river to clean effectively. I'd consider swimming in the Canal de l'Ourcq, which has been open for swimming for a few years, because it's more enclosed, like a big pool, so it's easier to filter.'
Ninon Le Pennec, 28, said she would not trust the mayor's word that the river water was safe. 'It doesn't look very clean to me.' But Paul Rodier, also 28, was more amenable. 'I'm a bit worried about it but I'd still give it a go,' he said. 'After all, the authorities say it's been cleaned up.'
Older Parisians recall with nostalgia how they used to swim in river water in the Deligny, a floating public pool on the left bank of the Seine, opposite what is now the Musée d'Orsay. It was a favourite haunt of the glitterati, attracting Hollywood stars such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Errol Flynn.
Opinions were always divided, however, about the wisdom of bathing in untreated river water.
In 1844, half a century after it opened, the Deligny's water was described as 'dirty, cloudy, often foul-smelling and unhealthy' by Eugène Briffault, one of the founders of Le Figaro newspaper.
Filters were eventually installed in 1919 after swimmers complained of muddy deposits in the water. Thereafter the authorities claimed it was safe because the water was continually being replenished. Unfortunately, that also made the unheated pool bone-chillingly cold, although it did offer the advantage of not reeking of chlorine. Many were sad when the Deligny mysteriously sprang a leak and sank in 1993.
As a new era begins, the mayor and her supporters are hoping that the sceptics will put aside their doubts and dive in.