Seine

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For other uses, see Seine (disambiguation).
Seine
The Seine viewed from the Eiffel Tower. The Place de la Concorde is at top right.
The Seine viewed from the Eiffel Tower. The Place de la Concorde is at top right.
Origin Burgundy
Mouth The English Channel
Basin countries France
Length 776 km (482 mi)
Source elevation 471 m (1,545 ft)
Avg. discharge 500 m³/s (17,660 ft³/s)
Basin area 78,650 km² (30,367 mi²)
The Seine starts near Dijon in northern France flows through Paris and into the English Channel.
The Seine starts near Dijon in northern France flows through Paris and into the English Channel.

The Seine (pronounced [sɛn] in French) is a major river and commercial waterway within the regions of Île-de-France and Haute-Normandie in France. It is also a tourist attraction, with excursion boats offering sightseeing tours of the Rive Droite and Rive Gauche within the city of Paris.

There are over three dozen bridges over the River Seine within Paris and dozens more spanning the river outside of the city. Examples in Paris include the Pont Louis-Philippe and Pont Neuf, the latter which dates back to 1607. Outside of the city, examples include the Pont de Normandie, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, which links Le Havre to Honfleur.

Contents

[edit] Navigation

The Seine is dredged and oceangoing vessels can dock at Rouen, 120 km (75 miles) from the sea. Commercial riverboats can use the river from Bar-sur-Seine, 560 km (350 miles) from its mouth. At Paris, the river is only 24 metres (80 feet) above sea level, 445 km (277 miles) from its mouth, making it slow flowing and thus easily navigable. It is 776 km (486 miles) long and flows into the Atlantic Ocean from the continent.

The tidal section of the river, from Le Havre to well beyond Rouen, is followed by a canalized section with four large multiple locks until the mouth of the Oise river at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Then two more multiple locks at Bougival / Chatou and at Suresnes lift the vessels to the level of the river in Paris, where the mouth of the Marne River is located. Upstream from Paris seven more locks ensure navigation to Saint Mammès (where the Loing mouth is situated). Through an eighth lock the river Yonne is reached at Monterau. From the mouth of the Yonne, larger ships can continue upstream the Seine till Nogent-sur-Seine. From there on, the river is only navigable for small craft. All navigation ends abruptly at Marcilly-sur-Seine, where the ancient Canal de la Haute Seine used to allow vessels to continue all the way to Troyes. This canal has been abandoned for many years now.[1]

The average depth of the Seine today at Paris is about eight meters.[citation needed] Until locks were installed to artificially raise the level in the 1800s, however, the river was much shallower within the city most of the time, and consisted only of a small channel of continuous flow bordered by sandy banks (depicted in many illustrations of the period). Today depth is tightly controlled and the entire width of the river between the built-up banks on either side is normally filled with water. The average flow of the river is very low, only a few cubic metres per second[citation needed], but much higher flows are possible during periods of heavy runoff. Special reservoirs upstream help to maintain a constant level for the river through the city, but during periods of extreme runoff significant increases in river level may occur.

A very severe period of high water in January 1910 produced extensive flooding throughout the city. The Seine again rose to threatening levels in 1924, 1955, 1982 and 1999-2000.[2] After a first-level flood alert in 2003, about 100,000 works of art were moved out of Paris, the largest relocation of art since World War II. Much of the art in Paris is kept in underground storage rooms that would be flooded.[3] A 2002 report by the French government stated the worst-case Seine flood scenario would cost 10 billion Euros, cut telephone service for a million Parisians, leave 200,000 without electricity and 100,000 without gas.[4]

Panoramic view of the Seine in Paris with St-Michel bridge on the left and Notre-Dame cathedral to the right
Panoramic view of the Seine in Paris with St-Michel bridge on the left and Notre-Dame cathedral to the right

[edit] Water quality

Periodically the sewerage systems of Paris experience a failure known as sanitary sewer overflow, often in periods of high rainfall. Under these conditions untreated sewage has been discharged into the Seine[5]. The resulting oxygen deficit is principally caused by allochthonous bacteria larger than one micrometer in size. The specific activity of these sewage bacteria is typically three to four times greater than that of the autochthonous (background) bacterial population. The pH level of the Seine at Pont Neuf has been measured to be 8.46[6]

[edit] History

 Please help improve this section by expanding it
with: more details about the river's history.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


Legend has it that after Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, her ashes were thrown into the Seine, though counter-claims persist into the present-day.[7]

According to his will, Napoleon, who died in 1821, wished to be buried on the banks of the Seine, a request that was not granted.

Until the 1930s, a towing system using a chain on the bed of the river existed to facilitate movement of barges upriver.[citation needed]

The Seine River was one of the original objectives of Operation Overlord in 1944. The Allies' intention was to reach the Seine by D+90 (ie 90 days after D-Day). That objective was met. An anticipated assault crossing of the river never materialized as German resistance in France crumbled by early September 1944. However, the First Canadian Army did encounter resistance immediately west of the Seine and fighting occurred in the Forêt de la Londe as Allied troops attempted to cut off the escape across the river of parts of the German 7th Army in the closing phases of the Battle of Normandy.

Some of the victims of the Paris massacre of 1961 drowned in the Seine after being thrown off from the Pont Saint-Michel and other locations in Paris.

Dredging in the 1960s mostly eliminated tidal bores on the river, known as “le mascaret.”

In 1991, the banks of the Seine in Paris—the Rive Gauche and Rive Droite—were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in Europe.[8]

The river is popular site for suicides and the disposal of bodies of murder victims.[9] In 2007, 55 bodies were retrieved from its waters; in February 2008, the body of supermodel-turned-activist Katoucha Niane was found there.[9]

[edit] Origin of the name

 This section does not cite any references or sources. (June 2008)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

"Seine" is often believed[who?] to have come from the Latin sequana, which itself comes from Gaulish (Celtic) Sicauna. The name Sicauna is made up of Celtic sakw, which means "sacred" and comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *sak- (which also gave Latin sacer and sanctus, which in turn gave English sacred and saint), and from a Celtic (or more probably Pre-Indo-European) suffix -onna which means "source, river", and which can be found in the name of many rivers of western Europe (such as the Garonne or the Dordogne). The name "Sakw -onna" ("sacred source", "sacred river"), is also the name of several other western European rivers, such as the Saône River, and possibly also the River Shannon.

Another proposed etymology[specify] posits that Sequana is the Latin version of Gaulish Isicauna. Is-Icauna would be the diminutive of Icauna, which was the Gaulish name of the Yonne River. The ancient Gauls considered the Seine to be a tributary of the Yonne, which indeed presents a greater average discharge than the Seine (the river flowing through Paris would be called Yonne if the standard rules of geography were applied). Icauna comes from the Pre-Indo-European roots inka -onna.

Further downstream in what is now Normandy, the Seine was known as Rodo, or Roto, which is a traditional Celtic name for rivers, and is also the original name of the Rhône River (see Rhône article for further explanations). This is proved by the name of Rouen, which was Rotomagos in Gaulish, meaning "field, plain (magos in Gaulish, whose meaning evolved into "market") of the Roto".

[edit] Painters

 The inclusion of certain items in this list is disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.
Carl Fredrik Hill, Seine-Landschaft bei Bois-Le-Roi (Seine Landscape in Bois-Le-Roi) (1877)
Carl Fredrik Hill, Seine-Landschaft bei Bois-Le-Roi (Seine Landscape in Bois-Le-Roi) (1877)
George Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886) is set on an island in the Seine.
George Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886) is set on an island in the Seine.

During the 19th and the 20th centuries, the Seine has inspired many painters including:

[edit] In arts and popular culture

[edit] References

  1. ^ NoorderSoft Waterways Database
  2. ^ Seine River Basin, United Nations Environment Programme Department of Early Warning and Assessment (accessed 5 June 2007
  3. ^ "Fearing a Big Flood, Paris Moves Art" by Alan Riding, The New York Times, February 19, 2003
  4. ^ "Paris flood warning" by Rory Mulholland, BBC News, 25 January 2002
  5. ^ Martin Seidl, The fate of organic matter in river Seine after a combined sewer overflow, ENPC - University Paris Val de Marne Paris XII (France), 1997, 181 pp.
  6. ^ Hogan, C Michael, Water quality of fresh water bodies in France, Lumina Press, Aberdeen 2006
  7. ^ In February 2006 a team of forensic scientists announced the beginning of a six-month study to assess relics from a museum at Chinon and reputed to be the remains of Jeanne d'Arc. In an April 4, 2007 article from Nature, the investigators reported their conclusion that the relics from Chinon came from an Egyptian mummy and a cat.
  8. ^ Paris, Banks of the Seine, the World Heritage Site entry from the UNESCO website
  9. ^ a b Supermodel Katoucha Niane found dead from The Daily Telegraph
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[edit] See also