Paris, Just Before the Storm: Sketching the City on the Eve of the Olympics

There's a particular kind of electricity in a city that knows it's about to be watched by the whole world. That's the Paris we found in July 2024 — barely days before the Olympic Games opened, the city was already transforming itself into a stage set, and not always gracefully.

We'd come for the art, the light on the Seine, and a sketchbook full of blank pages. What we hadn't quite bargained for was quite how much of the city would be fenced off, checked, and rerouted before the first race had even been run.

A City Behind Barriers

The change was impossible to miss along the river. Bridges we'd normally have wandered across freely were suddenly dressed in blue-and-white security hoarding, stamped with the Olympic rings and "PARIS 2024" in giant letters — beautiful in their own way, but also a blunt reminder that this wasn't going to be a normal visit. Whole embankments near Notre-Dame had been given over to grandstands and barriers well before the opening ceremony, and getting from one side of the island to the other sometimes meant a fair detour.

I sat and sketched this view of Notre-Dame and the bridges from the quai, and even at this quiet hour you can see the scaffolding of the Games creeping into every corner of the composition — it felt strange sketching something as timeless as the Seine while wedged between a security barrier and a queue of gendarmes.

Checkpoints and Closed Streets

Getting around took planning we hadn't expected. Certain streets near key venues were simply closed to the public, with armed police and barrier checks appearing with little warning. Bag searches became routine even for places that would normally have waved us straight through, and there was a heavier military presence on the streets than either of us had seen in Paris before. It wasn't threatening exactly, just relentless — a low hum of security that coloured every outing.

By the time we'd navigated a couple of diversions just to reach the Musée d'Orsay, we were grateful for the reward at the other end.

Refuge in the Museums

Inside, at least, Paris was still entirely itself. The Musée d'Orsay's chandeliers hadn't heard a word about any Olympics — all gilt excess and bling, sketched here with our café receipt tucked in as a little souvenir of the visit.

Up on the second floor café, looking out at the museum's great clock tower with its flag snapping in the wind, it was almost possible to forget the barricades outside.

And of course, no trip to the Orsay is complete without paying respects to the regulars — Cézanne's beloved Montagne Sainte-Victoire, and Toulouse-Lautrec's marvellously hatted Madame Lucy, both captured here in watercolour and ink.

Picasso, Politely Interrupted

A visit to see Picasso's studio material came with its own reminder of the Games — the sketchbook page ended up half art history, half Olympics, with the rings and bunting elbowing their way in among the notes on his Cannes atelier.

Even La Lecture, from 1932, got squeezed onto a page opposite a torn-up "PICASSO" title card — a nice, slightly chaotic collision of eras.

Quiet Corners

Away from the checkpoints, there were still pockets of ordinary Paris to be found — the quiet green of Père Lachaise cemetery, all ivy and old stone, felt a world away from the tension by the river.

And at Les Invalides, the golden dome rose above its own security cordon exactly as it always has, glinting rather magnificently over the whole business.

A City Holding Its Breath

Looking back at these pages now, what strikes me most is the contrast — Paris trying to be Paris, while quietly bristling with fences, checkpoints and closed roads in preparation for its moment on the world stage. It made for a strange, slightly on-edge kind of visit, but also an oddly memorable one. There's something about sketching a city mid-transformation, caught between its everyday self and the spectacle it's about to become, that you don't often get the chance to capture.

All sketches from the Paris 2024 sketchbook diary — pen, ink and watercolour, drawn on location.