On May 13, during an auction conducted at the official pawn shop of the City of Paris, you can purchase some of the removed locks. Owning a kitsch bunch of rejected love locks may not be as significant as having a piece of the Berlin Wall but memorable in its own way.

Symbols of love, romance, I-was-here, and if-you’re-going-to-do-it-then-so-am-I, the locks soon lost their 2010 charm as it became clear that they were a form of graffiti whose collective weight was a safety hazard for the railings and the bridges on which they were hooked. They grew like cancer, hundreds of thousands of them, according to the city’s estimate, until 2014 when it became necessary to remove them.

Removal began in the fall of that year from the Pont des Arts, the bridge between the Louvre and the Institut de France, which was lock-free a year later as plexiglas panels on which locks couldn’t be attached replaced the old barrier fencing. Attention then turned to the bridge behind Notre Dame, the Pont de l’Archevêché, which is recently lock-free. The locks on the railing around the ledges by the statue of Henri IV on Pont Neuf are slated next for removal.

The auction will take place at 3:15PM on May 13 at the Crédit Municipal de Paris, a financial institution in the Marais that primarily serves as the city’s official pawn shop. The Municipal Credit, is auctioning 165 lots of love-lock memorabilia. Most are in the form of hanging bunches of 2-28 connected locks estimated to go for 150-200€, along the 13 bridge panels estimated at 5000-8000€ and one longer panel estimated at 8000-10000€.

The public is invited to view the lots of love locks (cadenas d’amour) at the Municipal Credit office from May 10 to 13. The catalogue can be seen here.

Louis XVI ordered the creation of a pawn shop in the capital in December 1777, at a time when usury interest rates were about 120% per year, as a way of establishing healthier lending practices. The Mont-de-Piété, as it was then called, opened two months later. It is still located at the same address, 55 rue des Francs-Bourgeois in the 4th arrondissement.

Profits from the sale of the locks will go to three charities in Paris that focus on aid for migrants and refugees:

• Solipam, which stands for Solidarité Paris Maman, a network that coordinates the actions of medical and social professionals for the care of pregnant migrants and refugees in situations of great poverty until up to the third month after their child’s birth.
• Emmaüs Solidarité, a secular association that manages two centers where migrants benefit from lodging, daily meals, information about their rights, integrated healthcare, classes for children, and sporting and cultural opportunities for adults.
• Armée de Salut, the Salvation Army, an association that fights against all forms of exclusion and for integration into society, including the welcoming of migrants and refugee.

Post-note: The auction ended up raising 250,000 euros, with lots going for much higher than the estimates noted above. This was, after all, a charity auction.

Feeling nostalgic for love locks? See this France Revisited song video of 2012.

© 2017, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Paris Love Locks Sold for Charity appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

There is general agreement among residents of Paris that love locks are a form of graffiti that defaces the beauty it is intended to glorify. It’s a form of graffiti that nevertheless attracts, fascinates and generally pleases visitors. Many a museum director would love to have their collections as well known to tourists as the collection of metal on what are now referred to as Lock Bridges.

For the administration of the City of Paris, love locks don’t raise esthetic questions as much as cost and security questions since the weighty accumulation of locks on the bridges of Paris damages the host structures and creates safety issues. According to City Hall, over the past few months alone more than 700,000 locks have been placed on Paris’s various lockable bridges, i.e. those with metal grating that serves as the base for the lock virus. Luckily, most of Paris’s central bridges have stone railings.

On the Pont des Arts, the most famous of the lock bridges, a pedestrian bridge with an extraordinary view connecting the Right Bank at the Louvre with the Left Bank at the French Institute, 15 grating panels have already had to be removed for security reasons. The weight of 1100 pounds (500 kg) of locks on a single panel is four times the allowable weight limit for a portion of the railing.

Required to act, the City of Paris yesterday began experimenting with glass panels to replace some of the metal grating. Two have been placed on the Pont des Arts and others will follow.

“Paris is the capital of love, we’re very proud of that, but there are more beautiful ways to show that love then placing locks on a bridge,” said Bruno Julliard, deputy mayor and the official appointed to find what City Hall calls “artistic and ecological alternative solutions.”

The new glass panels are light enough to be supported by the bridge, and their transparency allows for a renewed view of the scenery that attracted people to place locks here in the first place.

It’s a clear reminder of how destructive and unappealing the lock virus has become over the years. Whether the glass panels can be spared more usual forms of graffiti remains to be seen.

“If this experiment proves to be conclusive we’ll extended it to other affected bridges,” said Julliard.

Since August, the City of Paris has also been inviting visitors to show and seal their union with a selfie rather than a lock through #LoveWithoutLocks in the hopes of making them aware of less destructive ways of demonstrating the affiliation between Paris and romance. A long kiss by the river might to do the trick as well.

– September 20, 2014

For a sweeter view of love locks, see this France Revisited video from 2012.

The post A Return to Beauty: The Beginning of the End of Love Locks in Paris? appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The two bridges in the heart of Paris that have been most defaced decorated with love locks are the Pont des Arts, the footbridge and fine-weather picnicking bridge that goes between the Louvre and the French Institute, and the Pont de l’Archevêché, the short bridge behind Notre-Dame that connects the City Island with the Left Bank.

They are presented here in a beautiful audio-slideshow featuring photographs by Joe Wilkins and music and text written, played and read by LaRae Raine Garretson. A France Revisited Production.

(c) 2011, All rights reserved.

The post Love Locks on the Bridges of Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.