A good five months before the Summer Olympics in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Olympic Village.
The construction project, which was completed after seven years, will provide space for 14,500 athletes, and 9,000 participants will live there during the Paralympics. Tony Estanguet, head of the organization of the games, accepted a symbolic key on Thursday at the handover by the Solideo company responsible for the construction.
“Exemplary social conditions”
“We are all part of the adventure of a century,” said Macron. Despite Corona, the project for the games (July 26th to August 11th) was completed “on time” and under “exemplary social conditions” – especially with regard to the safety of the workers.
Village with 3,000 homes
The 82 buildings on an area of 52 hectares just outside Paris in the towns of Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen and the municipality of Ile-Saint-Denis contain 3,000 apartments and 7,200 rooms. Two athletes are accommodated in a room measuring twelve square meters, and four share a bathroom.
In the village there are, among other things, laundromats, a 24-hour restaurant, grocery stores, a police station, a hair salon, a bar (without alcohol) and a multi-denominational center. The buildings should be usable for citizens, students and companies after the games.
Macron wants to swim in the Seine
As part of the ceremony, Macron promised that he would soon swim in the Seine. “Yes, I’m going in,” Macron replied to a question and joked to the journalists present. “I won’t tell you the date, otherwise you’ll be there.” At the games, open water swimming competitions will take place in the river, and from 2025 the city’s citizens will also be allowed into the water.
Since 2016, the French state and local authorities have invested around 1.4 billion euros to make the Seine and the Marne, its main tributary, “swimable”.