The Olympic flame made its way through Paris on Sunday, following an annual military parade to mark Bastille Day. From the Panthéon to the Sorbonne and the Grande Mosquée de Paris, the flame made its way from relay to relay through the heart of the capital.
The torch relay began at 11:45 am on Avenue Foch, at the close of a military parade. The torch was then taken to the Champs-Elysées, where football star Thierry Henry started the relay, with a large French flag flying under the Arc de Triomphe.
"It's not something you turn down, on our national holiday, on the Champs-Elysées," said the coach of France's Olympic football team. "It's simply extraordinary."
The flame will travel through the heart of the capital for almost 12 hours, reaching the Hôtel de Ville in the center of the city, where it will spend the night before resuming its Parisian journey, which will end on Monday at 8 pm at the Place de la République, with a free concert.
In two days, it will cover some 60 kilometers, carried by some 540 relay runners – 200 on Sunday, 340 on Monday – and supervised by 1,600 police and gendarmes, among the 18,000 law enforcement personnel mobilized for the event.
The torch will continue its two-week journey through departments in the Paris region, including Aisne, Oise, Val-d'Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne, Essonne, Yvelines, Hauts-de-Seine and Seine-Saint-Denis, before returning to the host city on Friday, July 26, the day of the Olympic Games opening ceremony, where it will stay for the remainder of the Games.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.