It has been raining and even snowing a lot in Île-de-France, the Paris region. As a result, the Seine is much higher than usual and you can see big waves in the river. The authorities have had to close all the express roads along the riverbank-- no doubt this suits the Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, who wants to return the riverbank to pedestrians. He has already shut several sections of the voies sur berges, which were built under French prime minister and president Pompidou. Pompidou was nicknamed "autoroutes tous azimuts" [superhighways in all directions] because he was a relentless "modernizer" of Paris. He destroyed the old Halles with its lovely ironwork pavilions, to the horror of preservationists around the world; he built the expressways along the river and the Périphérique or ring-road around Paris, and encouraged all sorts of towers and concrete monstrosities including La Défense and the Tour Montparnasse. The odd thing is that he saw himself as a supporter of art. No doubt in the Le Corbusier mode.
How did I get on that subject? Right, the flooding. So, the standard I'm-a-Parisian measure of flooding in Paris is the feet of the zouave, a statue of a French soldier under the bridge at Alma. Above, you see the zouave in normal times. He's quite large, 17 feet high (5.2 meters). During the great Paris flood of 1910, the water came up to his shoulders!
The statue was moved upward in 1974. So now, when the feet of the zouave are underwater, it's much more serious than it used to be. Look how high it is today!
