Organisers behind the 2024 Paris Olympics have confirmed the opening ceremony will be held on the River Seine as France breaks with a long-held Summer Games tradition.
In what's been dubbed "the most spectacular and accessible" ceremony of its kind, Paris 2024 will become the first summer Olympics to not hold its curtain-raiser inside a stadium.
By ditching the stadium model, it's expected that more than 600,000 spectators will be able to watch the event as athletes and teams officially announce their arrivals at the Games.
Athletes and officials from 206 countries will board more than 160 boats and embark on a six-kilometre journey between the Pont d'Austerlitz and Pont d'Iena bridges in central Paris.
Organisers will install 80 giant screens along the Seine in order to give onlookers the best chance of catching the show, while the upper sections of the riverbank will be open to the public.
Only the lower portion of the 777-kilometre Seine will be ticketed, but the vast majority of those expected to be in attendance at the riverside will get to watch for free.
"The Games is a unique, once-in-a lifetime experience," said Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris 2024 organising committee.
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"We want people to feel it. [The boats] will pass along the iconic landmarks of Paris - Notre Dame, the Orsay and Louvre museums, the Pont Neuf [Paris's oldest bridge], the Pont Alexandre III, the Grand Palais, the Eiffel Tower.
"It will be the first time people have free access to the opening ceremony, and not just in a stadium. It will also be a popular event."
France President Emmanuel Macron agreed to the idea in July despite major security concerns.
France24 quoted a mayoral source, who said organisers and Paris city hall had initially wanted an audience of some two million people, while security officials wanted to cap attendance at 25,000.
The decision to promote such an open event is an admirable one given so much of the world has been isolated from one another for the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, calling together crowds in such vast quantity could also be a health risk if France is still experiencing difficulty with the coronavirus when the Games roll around.
The 2024 Paris Olympics are scheduled to get underway on July 26 and will run until August 11, when the closing ceremony will be held at the gardens of the Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower.
