They are an emblem of historic Paris. They have been part of its landscape for 450 years and will continue to be so during the next Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024. The ‘bouquinistes’, the sellers of old and second-hand books on the banks of the Seine, will be able to continue offering this … summer their books, postcards, prints and souvenirs after winning the battle they had with the capital’s Police Prefect and the French Ministry of the Interior.
Initially, the police officer intended to remove 428 of the 932 also called ‘green boxes’ from their current location in order to guarantee security at the opening ceremony of the Olympics and allow more spectators to see the river parade of the athletes up close. Olympics. According to the ‘bouquinistes’, they wanted to get them out of the way because “we spoil the view.” «We are an important symbol of Paris, like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. A symbol cannot be touched, it cannot be hidden,” explains Jérôme Callais, president of the Cultural Association of Bouquinistes of Paris.
Booksellers feared they would have to close their stalls all summer. Disassembling and reassembling your boxes is a major operation. It takes three hours to dismantle just one. And another problem arose: that of storing the boxes and thousands of books. Furthermore, the Government did not provide compensation for the booksellers, all of whom were self-employed, despite its intention to leave them without income for several months, when many were counting on having a great time this summer due to the 15 million visitors expected for the Games.
The Seine booksellers refused to move. Having the stalls removed from the wall where they are placed was, in the words of the ‘bouquiniste’ Michel Bouetard, “as if our teeth were being pulled out.” They feared that their old book boxes would break during transport and be replaced by charmless ones. Now no two are alike. Many of them have never moved from their location. The oldest are 150 years old.
«We are an important symbol of Paris, like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. A symbol cannot be touched, it cannot be hidden.”
The fate of these sellers aroused the solidarity of many Parisians and book lovers around the world, and 184,000 signatures were collected against their transfer. In the end, the lack of a solution that would satisfy everyone led President Macron to authorize them to remain in their positions during the Olympics, considering them “a living heritage of the capital.” A decision that has forced the number of spectators at the opening ceremony of the Games to be reduced to 320,000, almost half of the 600,000 originally planned. “It has been a great relief after seven months of insomnia, of worries, because we didn’t know what was going to happen,” admits the group’s spokesperson. «We will have specific closures, for example, on opening day, marathon day or bicycle race. Some tests are going to impact our activity a little, but in general we will be able to open,” celebrates Callais near the Pont Neuf, one of the most famous bridges in Paris.
A legacy of the 16th century
Present almost uninterruptedly since the 16th century on the banks of the Seine, the ‘bouquinistes’ – the name comes from the word bouquin, book in French – boast of running the largest open-air bookstore in the world with a route of more than three kilometers between volumes. Heirs to the street sellers of books and pamphlets who were stationed next to the river, since 1891 they have been allowed to leave their merchandise in their stalls at night.
Paris currently has some 240 ‘bouquinistes’, with nearly a thousand green boxes containing some 300,000 books of all types of genres and for all budgets. On the ‘rive gauche’ (left bank), their stalls are located between rue du Bac and the Arab World Institute. On the right bank, they are installed between the Louvre Museum and the Marie Bridge. Owners of their boxes. They do not pay rent, although they do pay taxes, they are obliged to open an average of four days a week and respect strict regulations.
«We are ‘bouquinistes’ first and foremost because of the freedom to open or not to open, because of the passion and the conversations with the people we meet. That’s the main thing. And we try to make a living because we need to feed ourselves,” explains the president of the cultural association that brings together this group in Paris. “The big difference between a ‘bouquiniste’ and a bookseller is freedom,” he emphasizes. «Here there is no door to push, there is no obstacle. I have friends who own stores and there are days when not a single customer pushes the door. We have tens of thousands of people passing through here every day. And that’s fantastic. It is the most democratic bookstore there is. It is free access for everyone and the most popular,” Callais boasts.
