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the French monarchs. According to lore, something
special in the Bièvre’s water helped create the vivid
red color that established the dyers’ global reputation.
Fascination with the Bièvre has only grown since
the last open-air stretches of it in Paris were covered
completely in 1912. “It’s a tiny river with a weak flow
rate, but historically it’s attracted great interest,”
says Alain Cadiou, a water expert and the head of
the Union Renaissance de la Bièvre, a collective of
30-some nonprofits. Each of these organizations has
a different focus—from promoting the river’s cultural
heritage to protecting the environment.
After an extensive study in 2001, Bertrand Delanoë,
mayor of Paris at the time, decided that rehabilitating
the ancient river was too expensive. But nonprofits
alongside government coalitions in the Bièvre water-
shed have continued to campaign. The resulting
reopening projects in the suburbs have been a victory.
The suburb of Fresnes unveiled a park in 2003—
today a lush, forested area along the Bièvre and rich
with wildlife. In 2016, L’Haÿ-les-Roses followed suit,
reopening a 700-yard stretch of the river with a walk-
ing path tracing the newly landscaped banks. And the
cities of Arcueil and Gentilly—the closest southern
suburbs to Paris—will show off a joint reopening
project in the Parc du Coteau-de-Bièvre in 2022.
“The Bièvre will return to the gates of Paris and
once again find its confluence with the Seine,” says
Lert. With two million people, Paris is the most
densely populated city in Europe, and urban plan-
ners have no intention of digging a canyon or tearing
down buildings to uncover the river. But the Bièvre is
less than 10 feet underground in open spaces such as
the Square René Le Gall. Occupying the former veg-
etable garden of the Manufacture des Gobelins, this
park is one of three spots identified for potentially
reopening the river, along with Parc Kellermann and
the Natural History Museum annex.
The Bièvre’s renaissance isn’t just a means of cool-
ing the city, fighting global warming, and returning
nature to the urban milieu. It also creates a better
living environment for residents like me, who dream
of walking on a greenway instead of concrete, sharing
summer aperitifs with neighbors on the riverbanks
once roamed by Rabelais. “The Bièvre flowed in Paris
for thousands of years,” says Cadiou. “It would be
sensible to return it.” jToday fewer than 13 miles of this route are in broad
daylight, and the river’s waters are funneled into a
sewage-treatment plant just outside Paris.
Historically the Bièvre has been profoundly altered
by humans. Early monks channeled it for irrigation,
tanners soaked animal skins, and ice cutters hacked
blocks from ponds to source the city’s ice supply.
Competition for water access in this dirty, hard-
working fiefdom soon led to conflicts between trade
groups: dyers versus laundresses, tanners versus
butchers. In the 1300s Parliament ordered butchers to
dump animal guts in the Bièvre rather than sully the
Seine, then reversed course but couldn’t stop the flow
of refuse. The Bièvre turned into a rancid cesspool.
Over the years the Bièvre also collected legends—
some as muddied as its currents. There’s the tale of
Gentilia the nymph, transformed into the river by
the goddess Diana to escape a Trojan soldier in hot
pursuit. Then there’s the dragon said to have terrified
the land before Bishop Marcel banished the beast to
the Bièvre in the fourth century.
Although small, the Bièvre had a mighty reputa-
tion, good and bad. The river inspired artists and
writers such as François Rabelais and Victor Hugo,
who referenced it in Les Misérables. It also became
the great powerhouse of Parisian industry. The
Bièvre’s biggest claim to fame was the Manufacture
des Gobelins, which began as a riverside dye works
in the 15th century and later supplied tapestries forMary Winston Nicklin is a freelance writer and editor based
in Paris and Virginia.A late 19th-century illustration depicts the Bièvre River
rounding a bend in the Gobelins district of Paris.FRANCEParisSSeeiinneeBBiièèvvrreeParisParis
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The river didn’t always follow its current route (shown).
In the early Neolithic period, the Bièvre flowed in what
is now the Seine’s riverbed in Paris, while the Seine
curved around the hill of Montmartre. Floods and
erosion allowed the Seine to seize the Bièvre’s course—
just as it stole the Bièvre’s place in people’s imagination.Changing Course