Paris’ most famous street the Champs-Elysees has hosted a giant open-air picnic on Sunday as the French capital’s iconic boulevard seeks to reinvent itself. Nearly 273,000 people applied to take part in the event which saw a 216-metre-long red-and-white checkered rug cover the picnic ground and feature free packed meals from organizers’ eight partner restaurants.

Around 4,000 people have been selected to participate in the “le grand pique-nique”, with each guest invited to bring up to six additional people and choose one of two sittings, at noon or 2:00 pm. The “world’s largest tablecloth”, made from 25 pieces of recycled fiber, was to be assembled on site by 150 people, the organizers said.

People take part in a giant open-air picnic on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on May 26, 2024.

The aim of the event was to show that the Champs-Elysees, famous for its expensive boutiques and restaurants, was not only good for shopping, said Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the organizer, the Champs-Elysees Committee. “It’s a way of telling Parisians: ‘Come back to the Champs-Elysees’”, he said.

In 2023, the association transformed the avenue into an open-air mass “dictation” spellathon, pitting thousands of France’s brainiest bookworms against one another. With 1,779 desks laid out on the boulevard, organizers had sought to break the world record for a dictation spelling competition.

A top tourist attraction, the avenue has been gradually abandoned by locals in recent years. The historic UGC Normandie cinema, which opened in 1937, is set to close in June due to decline in business. On Monday, the Committee was due to present a 1,800-page study of possible ways to reinvent the Champs-Elysees. — AFP