by Thousands of people gathered on the Champs-Élysées for a huge free picnic organized by a committee of local traders and businesses fighting to stop the slow decline of the cobblestone known as “the most beautiful avenue in the world ” for a long time.
Once a favorite promenade for Parisians, the Champs-Élysées has in recent years been steadily abandoned by locals as popular shops and cinemas have given way to luxury boutiques and wealthy tourists as conservation on the avenue.
Related: Paris agrees to turn the Champs-Élysées into an ‘extraordinary garden’
“It’s a way of saying to the people of Paris: ‘Come back to the Champs-Élysées,’ to show them that the route is not just for high-class shopping,” said Marc-Antoine Jamet, head of Champs-Élysées with 180 members. committee that organized the event.
Around 273,000 people applied to take part in “le grand pique-nique”, and 4,400 were chosen to sit with up to six guests each on a 216 meter long red-and-white checkered picnic blanket, described by the organizers as him as “the greatest in the world. shard”.
Eight partner restaurants – including the venerable brasserie Fouquet’s, which has been full of French film and music stars for many years – provided meals for two separate sittings from ham baguettes to caesar salads, crudités and macarons.
“Thousands of people picnicking on one of the most famous avenues in the world, in sight of the Arc de Triomphe – that’s a truly popular celebration,” said guest of honor of the event, former Élysée Palace chef Guillaume Gomez.
Picnickers were enthusiastic. “The sky is blue, the sun is out, we are sitting in the middle of the Champs-Élysées. We are very lucky, aren’t we?” Fabien, who traveled in specially from outside Paris with his wife, Michelle, told BFM TV.
“And the picnic is very good – I got a Ladurée macaron,” said Léo, 14.
The committee has repeatedly warned that the iconic avenue has lost “its charm” over the past 30 years, falling victim to changing consumer habits as well as crises including gilets jaunes (“yellow jackets”) protests and the pandemic.
Last year he transformed the Champs-Élysées into a major outdoor dictation festival with 1,800 desks set out along its length in another exercise aimed at “enchanting” Paris with the avenue, as a backdrop for a large number of films.
However, many years ago – as the French-American singer Joe Dassin famously sang in the late 1960s, when the avenue was at its height – “You’ll find everything you need on the Champs -Élysées”.
The avenue’s last cinema, the UGC Normandie, which opened in 1937, will close next month, the third cinema to close in recent years amid declining ticket sales and what UGC called a “significant change”. on the demographic of Champs-Élysées visitors.
As entertainment venues and bookstores, record and clothing stores have disappeared, they have steadily been replaced by luxury sporting goods and luxury merchandise outlets, which have significant high street appeal – particularly for tourists.
French luxury group LVMH – owners of Louis Vuitton and Dior – paid more than €1bn for their recently acquired flagship store on the Champs-Élysées, according to estate agents, with surveys showing up to a quarter of all visits on the avenue now. dedicated to luxury brand shopping.
Ronan Guevel, who has lived on the avenue for over 20 years, told France Info radio: “When I was young we used to go out [to the cinema] on the Champs. There must have been seven or eight people on the avenue. Now the last one is going.”
Another cinema was recently replaced by a Lacoste sportswear store, Guevel said: “Brands that you can find almost anywhere have replaced the shops and venues that Parisians used to use. The Champs-Élysées have lost a bit of their soul.”
With more than 1.3 million people strolling the avenue each month property prices have skyrocketed, forcing smaller and less profitable independent shops and venues to hand back their keys in the face of rents that have soared rose 15% in the past year alone.
“Property speculation is the big issue,” said Paris councilor Nicolas Bonnet-Oulaldj. “The price per square meter is too high. We will have to call on the government for help in regulating and restricting rents in this part of the city.”
Paris City Hall is working on a €250m (£225m) plan aimed at turning an eight-lane urban highway into an “extraordinary garden”, but most of the work is not due to start until after this summer’s Olympics .
A number of small improvements are also being made to the avenue ahead of the Olympics, with platforms being restored along its length and more space allocated for pedestrians.
The Champs-Élysées committee is due to present on Monday a 1,800-page report on 150 proposals to reimagine the boulevard, aimed at leading “a more radical and wholesale transformation” in the neighborhood, Jamet said.
