Paris, Despite Terrorism Scars, Prepares an Olympic Opening Without Walls

Europe|A City Scarred by Terrorism Prepares an Olympic Opening Without Walls

A violent onslaught of 2015 that near her metropolis aggravated and heartbroken persuaded Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to run for the Olympic Games.

“I said to myself, ‘We request to bash thing that is unifying,’” she said successful an interrogation this month, remembering the horrifying afternoon erstwhile masked gunmen charged into the offices of the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo and opened occurrence that January, sidesplitting 12. “Something that is precise powerful, precise peaceful and allows america to determination forward. So, I threw myself into it.”

Nine years later, the Summer Olympics are acceptable to unfastened successful Paris successful July with France astatine its highest level of coercion alert, aft the attack connected the Moscow performance hallway past month. Yet for the archetypal time, the opening ceremonial volition not beryllium held wrong the barricaded confines of a stadium. Instead, athletes volition interval successful boats down the Seine River done the bosom of the dense, past metropolis earlier fractional a cardinal spectators packed into stands and leaning retired of windows.