The famous Champs-Elysees avenue and the storied Place de la Concorde in Paris will host the Summer Paralympics opening ceremony on Wednesday.
The elegant boulevard that runs across the 8th arrondissement in the west of central Paris is lined with opulent stores, mansions, and cafes. It forms a straight path that links the Place de la Concorde in the east with the Arc de Triomphe in the west.
Every day, tens of thousands of people swarm the one-mile, two-kilometer stretch of tree-lined roadway with expansive sidewalks.
It has traditionally been a place of celebrations and social meetings for French people.
There, in 1960, was where American actress Jean Seberg sold papers of the New York Herald Tribune while starring in the renowned new wave film “Breathless” directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
It will host a public march on Wednesday that is free to the public and that might include as many as 4,400 paralympians from across the world in addition to over 180 delegations.
It is the site of France’s two World Cup football victories, the traditional military parade on July 14, the national festival known as Bastille Day, and the finale of the Tour de France cycling competition.
Hundreds of thousands of Parisians and tourists gather there to celebrate NewYear’s Eve.
Originally fields and fallow land, the avenue began to take shape in the middle of the 17th century when Louis XIV’s city planner connected the Louvre to the Tuileries Garden.
Napoleon, the French Emperor, commissioned the Arc de Triomphe, which was first opened in 1836 and today stands at one end of the road in honor of France’s war dead.
Naturally, General Charles de Gaulle, the commander of France during World War II, selected it for his glorious return from exile on August 26, 1944, following the liberation of Paris from the Nazis.
Nonetheless, there have been instances of conflict on the esteemed road. When “yellow vest” anti-government demonstrators stormed the Arc de Triomphe and looted stores in 2018, police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons.
Nevertheless, residents have increasingly stopped using the Champs-Elysees because they believe it is too costly, noisy, and polluted. This is because shops and historic theaters have closed along the avenue as a result of rising rents and declining sales.
The name is derived from the French meaning Elysian Fields, the Greek mythological sanctuary for dead heroes, where Paris’s other well-known landmark, the Eiffel Tower, rises majestically just across the Seine.
The procedural and artistic sequences will take place at one end, and the official march for ticket holders will take place in Paris’ main square, the Place de la Concorde.
The area has a violent history. During the French Revolution, it was known as “Place de la Revolution” and was a site of executions where heads were literally rolled.
In 1793, during the Reign of Terror that followed the 1789 Revolution, King Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette were infamously executed there by guillotine.
After the July Revolution in 1830, it was renamed Concorde.
Today, the massive obelisk that stands in the center of the elegantly paved area beside the Seine is one of two that Ramses II originally erected outside the temple at Luxor, Egypt, in the 13th century BC. In 1830, Paris received it as a gift.
