Right in the heart of Paris, the banks of the Seine are today partly taken up with “expressways”. They were built in the 1960s and cut the city off from its river.
On the Right Bank, the Georges-Pompidou expressway, enabled one to cross Paris from west to east with no traffic light. On the Left Bank, the situation is different; the embankment road was only built over a 2.3 kilometre stretch, due to the 1974 extension project being stopped by the mobilisation of inhabitants and associations in defence of the landscape adjacent to Notre Dame Cathedral and against the expressway.
The project put forward by Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris and Anne Hidalgo, First Deputy Mayor in charge of architecture and urbanism, differs for each bank.
On the Right Bank the aim has been to transform the Georges-Pompidour expressway into an urban boulevard maintaining the car traffic but optimising access to magnificent “urban travelling”. This Right Bank project was carried out during the summer of 2012 and has enabled the Colline des Musées to be opened along the Seine by creating new crossing points near the Palais de Tokyo and the Jardins des Tuileries, and building a promenade of over a kilometre long opposite Île Saint Louis.
On the Left Bank, the 2.3 Km expressway along the embankment will be closed to car traffic between the Orsay Museum and the Pont d'Alma bridge. Everybody will thus be able to use these 4.5 hectares set in a unique world heritage site.
