Paris plunge: daily queues after city opens cleaned-up canal to swimmers

Free swimming at La Villette is first step in Paris's efforts to reopen some of its murky waterways to casual bathers, and the Seine could be next

Standing in his swimming trunks, Gilles looked up at the modern grey apartment buildings and trees that lined the Paris canal. He took a deep breath, then dived into the dark mass of water that had been officially banned to swimmers for decades.

"Bliss," he said after doing 500m of front crawl, occasionally brushing past bits of green algae in the new temporary swimming zone at La Villette canal basin, where Parisians can take their first legal dip in a city waterway for a century.