From Vikings to D-Day
Despite human development, the course of the River of approximately 775 km has been roughly the same since 12,000 years before Jesus Christ. An essential river route linking the capital to the English Channel, it was also used by invaders. The Vikings sailed it on their famous longships, burning Rouen to the northwest of Paris and besieging the capital in 841. Its strategic position also pushed the Allies to bomb most of the bridges downstream of Paris in June 1944 to allow good access. progress of D-Day.
Paris on Yonne
Have we been lied to? Scientifically, there is no photo, the Seine should not be called the Seine. The rules of hydrography are formal: when two rivers join, the one with the highest flow gives its name to the other, which becomes its tributary… However, the Yonne, crossing the Seine at Montereau-Fault- Yonne, has a higher flow (93m3 per second versus 79).
The Seine won its river standoff, primarily for cultural and historical reasons. The Gauls venerated the Source of the ancient Sequana, on the Langres plateau, where a Gallo-Roman temple had been installed. Too late, centuries later, to change the name of the river, forever associated with Paris.
Monet, Renoir and others
The Seine has always inspired artists. Writers, from Balzac to Flaubert, like poets, such as Apollinaire with his famous verse “Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine” and Verlaine. But also the singers and of course the painters, in particular the impressionists. Turner, Corot, Renoir, Pissaro, Sisley, Signac and Monet, who spent his life representing the river (“The Seine at Argenteuil”, “The Seine at Rouen”…).
To bathe or not?
Promises only bind those who believe in them… In 1988, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, trumpeted it: “In five years, we will be able to swim in the Seine again. And I will be the first to do it, in front of witnesses. » Bet failed!
If the dip has long been a must in the Seine (the must in the 17the century being to bathe naked!), it has been permanently banned since 1923 in Paris. Pollution, wastewater, security… Expensive developments have been undertaken to make swimming possible again in places. In 2025? French President Emmanuel Macron recently promised he would go swimming in the river. “But I’m not going to give you the date, you might be there”he joked.
In any case, watch out for diving. Because the Seine is shallow. In Paris, only 3.4 meters at the Pont Nationale. We are far from the Congo River, the deepest in the world (up to 220 m!).
Treasures but not only…
Sensitive souls refrain ! 50 to 60 human corpses are recovered each year from the waters of the Seine. And the river brigade is not at the end of its surprises…
An anthology of the craziest finds: voodoo dolls, a three-meter-long python, dead of course, an American bomb dropped in 1943, a medieval sword, Gallo-Roman coins, a stolen statuette attributed to the Rodin-couple Claudel and estimated at… 800,000 euros. The Six Nations tournament trophy, won in 2022 by the Blues, ended up in the water during a drunken evening on a barge. But was immediately recovered…
