The hundred or so Fontaines Wallace were therefore literal lifelines, allowing Parisians to drink without fear of killing themselves. And many of them survive to this day—from the ornate towers with their four caryatids representing bonté (goodness), simplicité charité and sobriété** to the humble green taps in most of Paris’s public parks, where every Parisian child gets into the habit of drinking public water as soon as they can walk.
Drinking something alcohol-free was definitely a habit that Wallace wanted to encourage. After the Prussian siege, when water supplies were even less reliable than usual, the price of drinking water went up alarmingly, so that many people began quenching their thirst with wine. And unlike the toffs, they didn’t have access to high-quality Champagne—they were quaffing vinegary gut-rot. It was no surprise that when the first Fontaine Wallace was connected up in August 1872, there was a small riot as people literally fought to get at the clean water.
Today, there are over 900 public drinking fountains in Paris, including three rather special ones that provide genuine French mineral water for free. The fountains in the place Paul Verlaine in the 13th arrondissement, the square Lamartine in the 16th and the square de la Madone in the 18th tap into a spring 500 metres below the city, and you can often see people filling up bottles to take home. The water is very soft (unlike Parisian drinking water), and is therefore said to give a purer taste to tea and coffee. These fountains also take the Parisian need for free drinking water to its logical French conclusion. They can’t be content with plain clean water—they want eau minérale.
La vie est une plage
The Parisian love affair with water comes into full fruition in summer, during Paris Plage (Paris Beach), the festival started by Mayor Bertrand Delanoë in 2002. For four weeks, from around 20 July to 20 August, a sizeable chunk of the city’s population can be seen streaming down to the river banks.
Before 2002, the city had turned its back on the river somewhat. In the 1960s, most of the Right Bank was disfigured by a highway, and along the Left Bank, the quais are busy streets that force anyone trying to get down to the river to risk their life crossing three or four lanes of traffic. Both the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville have cut themselves off from the river, whereas they used to be on its bank—the Hôtel de Ville was originally built on a square called the place de Grève (Sandbank Square) that was literally a beach.***
In fact, until Paris Plage, pretty well the only organized activities on the river were the bateaux-mouches, the expensive and infrequent Batobus river shuttles, one or two barge bars, dancing on the quai Saint-Bernard,**** and the bouquinistes, most of whom now sell far more miniature Eiffel Towers than books. Riverside fun was almost all improvised—you would take a bottle of wine to the pedestrian parts of the embankment or picnic on the Pont des Arts. Some stretches of the voies sur berges were pedestrianized on Sundays, but it wasn’t until Paris Plage that the citizens officially reclaimed full possession of the river from the car, albeit for only a few weeks in summer.
From mid-July to mid-August, palm trees spring up along the riverbank, while sandpits and pétanque pitches temporarily turn the riverside back into a sandbank. There is usually a swimming pool with aquagym and swimming lessons—all of them free. People can sign up for dance and aerobics classes and Tai Chi sessions, and try out sports like wrestling and fencing—again, all free of charge. And for those who prefer to do nothing, there are several hundred loungers and parasols laid out on artificial beaches (along with an equal number of security men to stop them being stolen). It really is a holiday resort for people who can’t afford to, or don’t want to, leave the city in summer. And Parisians flock there like migrating flamingos.
The migration is spreading out from the city centre, too. I live near Napoleon’s Canal de l’Ourcq, which was once one of France’s main trade routes, and is now slowly emerging from decades of industrial and urban decline. In summer, people rent canoes and pedalos, there are one-euro boat trips up the canal to the suburb of Pantin, and a small marina has been installed. Part of the canal, along the Bassin de la Villette, has even been incorporated into the Paris Plage scheme, forcing the city to rename it Paris Plages, plural. Now, as on the banks of the Seine, for a month or so in summer, you can listen to concerts, battle for loungers, learn to line-dance and tango, refresh yourself in a cool mist spray, or dive in the canal and then get yourself vaccinated against Weil’s disease, the potentially fatal illness caused by ingesting rat’s urine.
The improvements made to this 800-metre stretch of canal have put a whole neighbourhood back in touch with its wateriness. Even the local firemen have been getting in on the act. I regularly see them testing their hoses, spraying an arc of water across the canal, and wetting anyone who strays too close to the opposite bank—especially if she happens to be good-looking.
In fact, the Paris Plage(s) scheme is not the first time since Baron Haussmann that city leaders have shown their attachment to water. During Jacques Chirac’s time as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995, and then as President of France from 1995 to 2007, Parisians jokingly called their tapwater ‘Château Chirac’. In 1988, during his spell as Mayor, he promised to clean up the River Seine so completely that he himself would swim across it ‘before the end of 1995’. This would not have been a good idea because of the strong current and the number of barges and bateaux-mouches constantly surging up and down the river, but it was an idealistic promise
