Paris - Paris
is auctioning on Saturday the “locks of love” that once adorned the French
capital’s bridges. Clamped there by tourists and lovers over the past decade,
the locks, whose weight brought some structures to near-collapse, were
considered an eyesore by Parisians.
“This is the first-ever auction of love locks in the world,”
auctioneer Olivier Collin du Bocage said in a phone interview. The city hopes
to rise between 150 000 Euros [$163 000] and 200 000 Euros from the sale, he
said. Proceeds will go to charities helping refugees.
Although the origins of the love-lock trend, which started
around a decade ago, are unclear, it became a global phenomenon, with locks
found on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York,
the Great Wall of China, near the Millennium
Bridge in London
and on Stockholm’s
bridges.
In the French capital, much to the dismay of Parisians, it
became a tradition for lovers, mostly tourists, to attach metal locks to
bridges, starting with the Pont des Arts, a metal and wooden pedestrian
structure that has linked the Louvre museum to the left-bank
Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighbourhood since 1804. As they ran out of room on the
Pont des Arts, lovers sought out others bridges, rails on the Seine River’s
banks and street lamps, triggering a massive outcry from the city’s residents.
City of Locks
In 2015, Paris
City authorities removed
the locks from the Pont des Arts, following the collapse of a 200-kilogram
grate. The estimated 50-ton weight of the locks was seen to be threatening the
structure, which is on the Enesco’s World Heritage sites list.
Much water has flown under Paris’s bridges since. The locks have been
removed and grates have been replaced by glass panes, preventing new love locks
from appearing. Also, Paris, one of the world’s most-visited cities, has
seen its tourist industry hit following the terrorist attacks in 2015 and
labour protests in 2016.
Now, the City of Paris
hopes to get rid of a good chunk of the locks in a creative and productive way.
The charity auction will be conducted by the Credit
Municipal de Paris, a local government-managed bank that offers loans and
funding help to disadvantaged Parisians. Money raised has been earmarked
for the non-profit organizations Emmaus, the Salvation Army and Solipam to fund
aid for refugees as the French capital struggles to cope with an influx of
migrants from poverty and war-stricken countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Romantic Americans
The locks are on display until their planned auction at 3
p.m. on May 13, with bids also possible online, according to details on the
website of Credit Municipal de Paris.
“Already from our online site, we can see that the auction
is attracting much attention, notably from abroad,” Theo Recoules, a Paris City
Hall adviser in charge of the auction, said in a
phone interview. “This bodes well for the sale.” The foreigners most interested
are Americans, “a very romantic lot,” followed by Italians, Brits, and Russians
and Chinese, he said.
A 90-page auction catalog describes 165 batches, ranging
from straight handfuls of 5 to 20-odd locks to elaborate presentations, some of
which include a bridge grid and weigh over a metric ton. While most starting
prices are set at 150 Euros to 200 Euros, heftier lock loads are estimated at 5
000 Euros to 8 000 Euros.
“Some of the locks have been set on precious wood, a lot of
has been done to clean them up and present them as true pieces of art,” Collin
du Bocage said, when asked why some of the locks are so expensive.
Revolutionary
Cobblestones
Apart from those removed from the Pont des Arts, the batches
on sale will also include locks from the Archbishop’s bridge, which leads to
the island on which the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral stands. In all, the
batches for sale represent around 7 percent of the total weight of the locks
removed from Paris
structures.
“This is not much but most of the locks have deteriorated
during their removal as they spent a lot of time outside,” he said.
Some items feature locks dangling over a “pave de Paris” cobblestones
used for paving many streets in the French capital. The stones are a symbol of
the city’s three-century long history of revolutionary barricades, during which
many of these “paves” were hurled by protesters.
“Online, one can see that many people have tried and
zoomed-in on the locks for sale, perhaps to try and see if theirs are a part of
the auction,” Collin du Bocage said. “We gave names to the lots according to
those that were engraved on the locks. Although we tried to have high-quality
definition pictures, it’s difficult to see.”
Not Melting
As for the rest of the locks that have been stored away,
city officials say they may be too damaged to sell and too toxic to recycle.
“We will later see what we can do with the remaining locks,” Paris City
Hall’s Recoules said. “The material some are made
of make them impossible to melt while others contain harmful ingredients that
prevent their re-use or recycling for now.”
BLOOMBERG