Paris plans to innovate at the Olympic Games in 2024 and, for the first time, host an opening ceremony outside a stadium.
According to ambitious plans published on Monday, the ceremony will be staged in the heart of the city along the Seine river.
The sequence of events is also to be reversed. Instead of a show and the subsequent presentation of the nations, there will be a 6-kilometre-long parade with athletes in around 160 boats across the Seine.
The boats will pass by Paris’s most iconic monuments, bridges and cultural institutions, including Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, where the ceremony will then take place.
“The river, its bridges and the capital’s iconic monuments will serve as the backdrop for a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, showing the world the best of Paris,” organizers said in a statement.
The Summer Games in Paris are set to start on July 26, 2024.