parisbynumbers.com

The Seine is a stunning river - cutting a deep line through the very heart of Paris, lined with gift stalls and book shops, it’s the Seine that brings the city to life. It’s also dangerously liable to flooding, a problem that’s only worsened by the close proximity of so many of France’s key monuments, government buildings and and major transport hubs to its leafy banks.

While anxious officials may use all manner of tools to monitor the river’s ebbs and flows, Paris’ citizens and media use a more casual indication of the likely danger - a statue. The Zouave statue, in the image of a 19th Century Algerian soldier, stands under the Alma Bridge (Pont d’Alma) in the west of Paris, barely meters above the water. As the tide rises up to his body, Parisians start to worry - if it touches his toes a full-scale flood alert is inevitable.

In recent years Paris has been relatively free from flooding, and new flood control defences have gone some way to reducing the risk. But in the twentieth century three ocassions have seen water levels high enough to almost submerge the Zoave statue entirely, in 1955, 1924 and in 1910 - when the stone soldier was in it up to his neck.

Indeed, the 1910 flood is the most calamitous in Paris history - water levels of almost 10 metres saw very signifcant swathes of the city submerged for as long as a fortnight, and plagues of disease and social unrest sweep in as a result. Most recently, concerns were raised in 2002 - a summer which saw many European capitals under water - when heavy rain forced the levels to new highs. City paper Le Parisien kept a graphic of the Zoave statue on its weather pages for several weeks, and the whole of France breathed a collective sigh of relief when the waters eventually receeded. For not only does government and the Metro system need to keep on top of the water levels - the treasure-filled basements of the Louvre and The Musee d’Orsay art galleries are perched perilously close to the banks…