The Seine will play a starring role at this summer's Paris Olympics, with the opening ceremony scheduled to take place on the river and swimming competitions to be held there as well.
Here's what you need to know about the historic waterway.
From wars to revolutions to the coronavirus pandemic, most of the earthquakes in French history have occurred on the banks of the Seine.
Vikings sailed up the river in longboats in the 9th century, torched Rouen in 841, and then laid siege to Paris.
In 1944, Allied forces bombed most of the bridges downstream of Nazi-occupied Paris in preparation for the D-Day landings that would liberate Western Europe.
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More than a decade later, the young Queen Elizabeth II was treated to a Seine River cruise on her first state visit to France since her accession to the throne.
The Seine was also where Parisians gathered when they were allowed to leave their homes at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
French Impressionist master Claude Monet spent his life painting rivers from different perspectives.
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Hollywood star Doris Day, British rock singer Marianne Faithfull, and American crooner Dean Martin have sung about the song.
And singer and actress Jane Birkin also jumped into it during a heated argument with her songwriter partner Serge Gainsbourg.
The Seine has long inspired artists, writers and musicians. It has also inspired countless couples who pledged their eternal love by chaining personalized padlocks to bridges in Paris.
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A cruise on the Seine is on most tourists' bucket lists, but the Seine is also the river that transports everything from grain to Ikea furniture to materials used to build the Olympic Village. there is.
France's second-busiest river transports around 20 million tonnes of goods each year, the equivalent of around 800,000 truckloads.
Swimming in the Seine was all the rage in the 17th century, when people would dive naked, but it has been banned for the past century for health and safety reasons.
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But all that is about to change, with France spending 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) to remove feces and other impurities before the Olympics.
The open water swimming event and triathlon will start from the Pont Alexandre III, a 19th-century engineering marvel at the foot of the Champs-Elysées, with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
Paris wants to keep the river open to bathers after the Olympics, and President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to lead the charge.
There's also a spooky side to cleaning the Seine. Between 50 and 60 carcasses are pulled from the water each year.
Recent dredging of the river also unearthed a voodoo doll with pins stuck in it, a (dead) three-meter-long python, a cannonball dating back to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and six trophies. The Rugby Nations tournament was dropped during a celebration on the river after France won the 2022 Rugby Nations tournament.
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