International tourists travel far and wide with a very detailed bucket list of where to visit in Paris. For many, one of the greatest attractions is the iconic love lock bridges throughout the city. Scratching your initials into a lock to attach to the bridge with what we all thought would be an eternal trademark of your visit has become very popular among the hundreds of thousands of locks in the city of love. This ‘forever and always’ tradition is to come to an end starting as soon as Monday.
Please Paris, on behalf of hopeless romantics world wide, tell us you’re kidding.
Paris’ city council has announced the removal of the locks for two main reasons, “This phenomenon generates two problems: a lasting degradation of the heritage of Paris and also a risk to the safety of visitors, Parisians and tourists” according to a statement from Town Hall. The Pont des Arts, one of the largest bridges for the love locks, will be closed for a week in July to accomplish the majority of removal to many promises of friendship, love and perhaps promises to return.
On the flip side, the Facebook activist group “No Love Locks” was launched as a support group to advocate responsible tourism.
Those lucky enough to have traveled and seen the bridge themselves now hold a priceless piece of history for their scrapbook, so get your #tbt ready for this week and show the world that you were a part of something so beautiful!
Featured image via Pixabay on Pexels
Hello Ms. O’Connell and people happening to read this article and the comments. As a foreign alien who has been living in Paris, France for the past 18 years and who’s always been a *very romantic* man (the reason for coming was to see again the only girl I’d ever fallen in love with at first sight, when we met in Caracas, Venezuela some 11 years before I came to Paris; I needed that in order to close that very significant chapter of my life), please let me tell you how deeply I feel related to the feelings of couples from around the world who do this love-locks things and find out our city is totally trashing its very well earned reputation of Romantic Capital of the World. I do really feel for you, people.
Now, both you sweethearts who flock in here for an ever-lasting memory of a romantic escapade or visit with your SO, and we Parisians (native or not) will probably agree that fixing our love-locks to a very beautiful place offering one of the best views of Paris, just *may* feel that there’s a difference btw locking a love-lock in a very romantic spot and locking it to the same very romantic spot *already so overflowing with so many testimonials* that, at times, it *may* actually lessen the experience somehow; IF the thought crosses your mind that this overflow of love-locks starts looking a lot like the myriad love graffittis written on or, even worse, actually carved in, in historical monuments like cathedrals, churches, statues, castles, manors, famous writers’ houses, etc. Surely nobody wants to spoil their romanticism by adding their modest contribution to the stealthy and slow degradation of monuments, right?
So here’s my suggestion: WHAT IF, instead of using a love lock, we and our SOs go find a peeble or small rock, write our stuff on it (or carve it in) and then throw it out into the Seine? Try different spots, b/c a time will come when, if most of us people happen to choose the same spot,a mound will eventually be formed, causing trouble for the navigation of our bateaux-mouches. This way, we’ll all make sure that our personal testimonial of love not only will remain in Paris forever, but it will also mean that we are *respectful* of both the city itself and of the *romantic feelings of other people like us*; who *may* feel dissapointed upon realizing that the massive love-locking *may* look like as a cheap, mass-consumption of a fad which will eventually be cleaned up by the maintenance employees and will give our love testimonials a very sad and totally unromantic end, like the garbage fills. Please think of that, nobody wants that, don’t they? So let’s all get the idea right: *YES* to our love testimonials, and *no* to do it in a way that not only degradates particular spots of the city itself but which also risks being removed sooner or later and disposed of in a totally unromantic way. Our love testimonials desserve much better than risking being buried under tons of garbage when city employees are given orders to clean up the place.
May our love and romantic feelings last forever and may we never dissapoint our SOs nor be dissapointed by them to the point of breaking up. May real love always prevail!!!
Hi Fabien, thanks so much for your thoughts. You do indeed have some great ideas of new ways romantics can fulfill the legacy Paris as left in bringing us together in the name of love. Although changes were made to this bridge, I do have faith that true love will linger and that it has found its home in Paris with the legacy of the locks. All the best, Rachel