Paris has chosen the iconic Champs-Elysees avenue and the historic Place de la Concorde to host the opening ceremony for the Summer Paralympics on Wednesday (August 28, 2024). The prestigious avenue sweeping through the 8th arrondissement to the west of central Paris is dotted with cafes, palaces and luxury shops and connects the Arc de Triomphe in the west with Place de la Concorde in the east in a single straight line. The Champs-Elysees Tens of thousands of people daily throng the two-kilometre - (one mile) - long tree-lined artery with its wide sidewalks.
It has long been for French a place of celebrations and popular gatherings. It was there in 1960 that American actress Jean Seberg appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s legendary new wave film “Breathless” selling copies of the New York Herald Tribune. On Wednesday it will be the scene of a popular parade, open to everyone and involving up to more than 180 delegations and 4,400 para-olympians from around the world.
France has celebrated two football World Cup victories there, the traditional military parade on July 14, the Bastille Day national holiday, and the Tour de France cycle race ends there. Hundreds of thousands of Parisians and tourists gather there to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Once fields and fallow land, the avenue started to take shape when Louis XIV’s city planner first linked the Louvre to the Tuileries Garden in the mid-17th century.
At one end of the avenue is the Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by French.