The Paris Bridge of Olympic Joy and Its Violent Past

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If the Olympic Games have made of Paris a midsummer night’s dream, perhaps the Pont du Carrousel has been its heart, a dimly lit bridge over glittering water, a merry-go-round of incarnations as the weeks have passed.

The broad bridge spans the center of Paris, leading from the Quai Voltaire on the Left Bank of the Seine River to three vaulted openings into the Louvre courtyard on the Right Bank. It has always been a place for lovers to linger, joggers to pause, selfie seekers to snap and Paris wanderers to succumb to wonderment.

There are few better places to drink in the city. The Grand Palais and Eiffel Tower rise to the west. To the east loom the domed Académie Française and, in the distance, the Notre-Dame Cathedral, now almost restored after the 2019 fire. The cleaned-up river is ever-changing, now churning after a downpour, now glassy still.

France was in a somber mood through much of the summer. Then the Paris Olympics began two weeks ago, replacing social fracture with patriotic rapture, dissolving fences of division into bridges of understanding, none more unifying than the Pont du Carrousel, at least for now.

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People walking and cycling at a crosswalk at the entrance to the Pont du Carrousel.
Walking and cycling at the entrance to the Pont du Carrousel in Paris on Thursday.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

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The bridge spans the Seine from Quai Voltaire on the Left Bank to a grand entrance into the Louvre courtyard on the Right Bank.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

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