The Seine, which rises near Dijon in northern France, flows through Paris and into the English Channel.
The
Seine () is a slow-flowing major
river and commercial waterway within
the regions of
Île-de-France and
Haute-Normandie in
France and famous as a romantic backdrop in photographs of
Paris, France. It is also a tourist attraction, with
excursion boats offering sightseeing tours of the
Rive Droite and
Rive Gauche within the city of
Paris. It terminates in the
Bay of the Seine region of the English Channel and is navigable by ocean-going vessels for about ten percent of its length, as far as
Rouen, 120 km (75 miles) from the sea, while over sixty percent of its length, as far as
Burgundy near the Swiss Alps, is negotiable by commercial riverboats and nearly its whole length is available for recreational
boating.
There are 37
bridges over the River Seine just
within Paris and dozens more spanning the river outside of the city. Examples in Paris include the
Pont Louis-Philippe and
Pont Neuf, the latter which dates back to 1607. Outside of the city, examples include the
Pont de Normandie, one of the longest
cable-stayed bridges in the world, which links
Le Havre to
Honfleur.
Origin of the name
The name "Seine" comes from the
Latin Sequana, a Latinisation of the
Gaulish (
Celtic)
Sicauna, which is argued to mean "sacred river". Some have argued that
Sicauna is cognate to the name of
Saône River, though an argued relationship to the
River Shannon in Ireland is unlikely, given the very different forms of the two; Gaelic
an tSiona, dative
Sionainn is rather from Prehistoric Irish *Sinona. Another proposal has it that
Sequana is the Latin version of Gaulish
Issicauna Lower-Icauna, which would be the diminutive of
Icauna, which was the Gaulish name of the
Yonne River. Some believe the ancient
Gauls considered the Seine to be a tributary of the Yonne, which indeed presents a greater average discharge than the Seine (the river flowing through Paris would be called Yonne if the standard rules of geography were applied).
Some identify the river Sikanos, origin (according to
Thucydides) of the Sicanoi of Sikelia (
Sicily), with the river Sequana (Seine).
Further downstream in what is now
Normandy, the Seine, the second longest river in France, was known as
Rodo, or
Roto, which is a traditional Celtic name for rivers, and is also the stem of the
Rhône River (see Rhône article for further explanations). This is proved by the name of
Rouen, which was
Rotomagos in Gaulish, meaning "Roto-field/plain" (
magos in Gaulish), whose meaning evolved into "market of the Roto".
Navigation
The Seine is dredged and oceangoing vessels can dock at
Rouen, 120 km (75 miles) from the sea. Commercial riverboats can use the river from
Bar-sur-Seine, 560 km (350 miles) to its mouth. At Paris, there is 37 bridges.The river is only 24 metres (80 feet) above sea level, 446 km (277 miles) from its mouth, making it slow flowing and thus easily navigable. It is 776 km (486 miles) long and flows into the
Atlantic Ocean from the continent.
The tidal section of the river, from
Le Havre to well beyond Rouen, is followed by a canalized section with four large multiple locks until the mouth of the
Oise river at
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Then two more multiple locks at
Bougival /
Chatou and at
Suresnes lift the vessels to the level of the river in Paris, where the mouth of the
Marne River is located. Upstream from Paris seven more locks ensure navigation to
Saint Mammès (where the
Loing mouth is situated). Through an eighth lock the river
Yonne is reached at
Montereau-Fault-Yonne. From the mouth of the Yonne, larger ships can continue upstream the Seine till
Nogent-sur-Seine. From there on, the river is only navigable for small craft. All navigation ends abruptly at
Marcilly-sur-Seine, where the ancient
Canal de la Haute Seine used to allow vessels to continue all the way to
Troyes. This canal has been abandoned for many years now.
The average depth of the Seine today at Paris is about eight metres. Until locks were installed to artificially raise the level in the 1800s, however, the river was much shallower within the city most of the time, and consisted only of a small channel of continuous flow bordered by sandy banks (depicted in many illustrations of the period). Today depth is tightly controlled and the entire width of the river between the built-up banks on either side is normally filled with water. The average flow of the river is very low, only a few cubic metres per second but much higher flows are possible during periods of heavy runoff. Special reservoirs upstream help to maintain a constant level for the river through the city, but during periods of extreme runoff significant increases in river level may or may not occur.
A very severe period of high water in January 1910 produced
extensive flooding throughout the city. The Seine again rose to threatening levels in 1924, 1955, 1982 and 1999-2000. After a first-level flood alert in 2003, about 100,000 works of art were moved out of Paris, the largest relocation of art since
World War II. Much of the art in Paris is kept in underground storage rooms that would be flooded.
[ by Alan Riding, The New York Times, February 19, 2003] A 2002 report by the French government stated the worst-case Seine flood scenario would cost 10 billion
Euros, cut telephone service for a million Parisians, leaving 200,000 without electricity and 100,000 without gas.
Watershed
The basin area is 78,910 square kilometers, 2 percent of which is forest and 78 percent cultivated land. In addition to Paris, three other cities with a population over 100,000 are in the Seine watershed—
Le Havre,
Rouen, and
Rheims—with an urban growth rate of 0.2 percent. The population density is 201 per square kilometer.
Water quality
Periodically the sewerage systems of Paris experience a failure known as
sanitary sewer overflow, often in periods of high
rainfall. Under these conditions untreated
sewage has been discharged into the Seine. The resulting
oxygen deficit is principally caused by
allochthonous bacteria larger than one micrometer in size. The specific activity of these sewage bacteria is typically three to four times greater than that of the autochthonous (background) bacterial
population. The pH level of the Seine at
Pont Neuf has been measured to be 8.46.
In 2009, it was announced that
Atlantic salmon had returned to the Seine
History
The Seine and Eiffel Tower
The Seine near the Invalides bridge
A walkway along the Right Bank near the Tuileries
Legend has it that after Jeanne Darc (better known as "
Joan of Arc") was
burned at the stake in 1431, her ashes were thrown into the Seine, though counter-claims persist into the present-day.<.
According to his will,
Napoleon, who died in 1821, wished to be buried on the banks of the Seine, a request that was not granted.
In January 1910, the Seine flooded 20 feet above normal, drowning streets throughout the city of Paris and sending thousands of Parisians fleeing to emergency shelters. The
1910 Great Flood of Paris was the worst the city had seen since 1658 when the water reached only a few centimeters higher.
Until the 1930s, a towing system using a chain on the bed of the river existed to facilitate movement of barges upriver.
The Seine River was one of the original objectives of
Operation Overlord in 1944. The Allies' intention was to reach the Seine by D+90 (ie 90 days after
D-Day). That objective was met. An anticipated assault crossing of the river never materialized as
German resistance in France crumbled by early September 1944. However, the
First Canadian Army did encounter resistance immediately west of the Seine and fighting occurred in the Forêt de la Londe as Allied
troops attempted to cut off the escape across the river of parts of the German 7th Army in the closing phases of the
Battle of Normandy.
Some of the victims of the
Paris massacre of 1961 drowned in the Seine after being thrown off from the
Pont Saint-Michel and other locations in Paris.
Dredging in the 1960s mostly eliminated
tidal bores on the river, known as
“le mascaret.”In 1991, the banks of the Seine in Paris—the
Rive Gauche and
Rive Droite—were added to
UNESCO's
list of World Heritage Sites in Europe.
The river is a popular site for suicides and the disposal of bodies of murder victims.
[ from The Daily Telegraph] In 2007, 55 bodies were retrieved from its waters; in February 2008, the body of supermodel-turned-activist
Katoucha Niane was found there.
Carl Fredrik Hill,
Seine-Landschaft bei Bois-Le-Roi (Seine Landscape in Bois-Le-Roi) (1877)
During the 19th and the 20th centuries, the Seine has inspired many painters including:
In arts and popular culture
- In Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, Jean Valjean escapes from the sewers on the banks of the Seine. Waiting there is Inspector Javert, who regretfully allows him to escape. Javert, contemplating what he had just done, decides to throw himself to his death in the river.
- David Lanz wrote a piano solo piece entitled Leaves on the Seine in his album, Nightfall.
- This river appears in Call of Duty 3 as a multiplayer map, named Seine river.
- The Decemberists have a song on their "Castaways and Cutouts" album titled, "The Legionnaire's Lament", which entails a legionnaire longing to return to France and the "sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine".
- in Down and Out in Paris and London, novellist George Orwell in his semi-autobiography was down on his luck with no money to buy food and becomes desperately hungry. He and his Boris tried to fish dace in river Seine but was unsuccessful. He commented many years later that the fish became very cunning after the Siege of Paris, which why it was futile exercise to try to catch them.
- ABBA has a song, Our Last Summer with the lyrics saying 'walks along the Seine, laughing in the rain'
- There is a joke which centers on the Seine, which goes, "If you jump off a Paris bridge, you're in Seine!" with the word insane replaced with in-Seine.
The distinctive face of Resusci Anne was based on L'Inconnue de la Seine, the death mask of an unidentified young woman reputedly drowned in the Seine River around the late 1880s.
