This was the first Opening Ceremony to take place through an entire city rather than in a stadium, which in some ways made it perfect for television—no one present got to see everything. But it was the performers’ relationships with the crowd that made the daring spectacles work.
The event poked fun at various national stereotypes, from an accordionist on the Pont d’Austerlitz to a woman dancing in a dress made of croissants to a cast of 80 Moulin Rouge cancan dancers. A dozen headless Marie Antoinettes danced in the windows of La Conciergerie, where the country’s final queen was imprisoned before she met the guillotine. A gendarme dressed as Joan of Arc rode a metal horse down the Seine
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PARIS — For a while, in the days leading up to Friday’s Olympics opening ceremony, Paris in 2024 felt like Tokyo in ‘21 or Beijing in ‘22: the crowds emptied out, silent but for wind drifting through barren squares.
But then—police opened the barriers, and for the first Olympics since , in 2018, fans poured in. Some 300,000 of them gathered along the banks of the Seine, huddling under umbrellas and waving flags. They leaned out of Mansard windows and held banners off balconies. They watched from restaurants overlooking the water and on
Pont d’Austerlitz
