There is a feeling of the day after a party at the site of the Paris 2024 Games. This moment, when the mind is still confused, you have to leave everything behind, erase all traces of the evening. The Grand Palais, the Place de la Concorde or the stadium at the foot of the Eiffel Tower no longer resonate with the tricolour performances and the fervour that was heard during the Olympic and Paralympic summer. Today, the noise of the unscrewing machines and the metal supports that battalions of manipulators are busy dismantling has taken over.
This will continue to be the case until the end of October in most of the iconic and ephemeral sites that dazzled so much during the competitions. “We need to be able to return them as quickly as possible to Paris and to Parisians.explained Edouard Donnelly, chief operating officer of the Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (COJOP) during a press conference on Tuesday 10 September. We start with the furniture, lighting systems, wiring, etc. before tackling the heavier infrastructure. We dismantle the opposite of what we assemble. »
Operations began the day after the Paralympic Games opening ceremony on 28 August in Place de la Concorde, where dizzying stands were set up for urban sports during the Olympic fortnight. Since then, the western part of the square, where the Luxor obelisk stands, has been reopened to traffic, with some work to connect traffic lights.
Time is running out
The Invalides (archery), Champ-de-Mars (blind football and judo) and Grand Palais (fencing and taekwondo) sectors will have to wait a few days or even weeks more, but all the temporary installations used during the Games must have been cleared by the end of October or beginning of November at the latest, according to a well-established timetable. Because time is running out: the great nave of the Palais des Beaux-Arts is to serve, from 27 September, as the new stage for the fashion week shows.
The schedule is even tighter – but the restoration operations are easier – for the permanent grounds rented by Cojop. The stadiums of Bercy, Villepinte, Portes de Versailles and La Chapelle must resume their programming as soon as possible, as must the Stade de France, which is preparing to host the Mylène Farmer concert at the end of the month.
The venues that were only used for the Olympic Games have already removed all traces of the “enchanted parenthesis”: the banks of the Seine have been cleared of the tubular stands and temporary installations set up for the opening ceremony on 26 July; football stadiums from Nantes to Marseille have resumed their main function for the resumption of the Ligue 1 championship; the national golf course of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Yvelines) reopened just a few days after the end of the Olympic tournament; Teahupoo (Tahiti), Elancourt (Yvelines) and the marina of Marseille (etc.) have also turned the page on the Games.
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