The Paris Olympic Cauldron and Daring Hot-Air Balloons

The lighting of the cauldron is always the climax of any Olympic opening ceremony; however, the finishing touch on the inaugural day of the Paris 2024 Olympics was an extra surprise, dazzling spectators worldwide. Instead of an earthbound flame, the glowing ring rose into the rainy night sky, apparently tethered to a silver hot air balloon.  

Created with lights and mist, the faux flame has become a fixture of the Paris Olympics. At  dusk thousands of spectators gather to watch the helium balloon rise over the Jardin des Tuileries, perhaps lulled into a sense of peace with a dream that the balloon, once released, would lead to calm horizons.  

Parisians are in love with the balloon and its seemingly molten cauldron, and are petitioning for its permanent status. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has written to President Emmanuel Macron asking to keep the attraction alive in its current position after the end of the Games. On August 7, 2024 Hidalgo said on France 2 news, “I would very much like to keep this symbol of the games at this very spot because elsewhere it would not have the same significance.” Hidalgo added, “Our heritage has been magnified by these games, and I think we need to add to it. Everybody is in love with Paris today, so let’s continue.”  

The wizard of “ahhs” behind the fairytale balloon is the ever-so French Mathieu Lehanneur. Despite his calm repose, he said it would be an honor if the attraction were to become a permanent feature of the Paris skyline, as did the Eiffel Tower after the 1889 World’s Fair. 

Born in 1974, Lehanneur is a graduate of the French National School of Industrial Design. Upon graduation in 2001, he set up his own design firm – now in Ivry-sur -Seine – where he and his team focus on industrial and interior design. From small to large, Lehanneur’s projects range from the design of drug packaging to the choir of a church; from Issey Miyake’s perfume bottle to Café Mollien in the Louvre. His works are found in museum collections around the world.  

Like a magical illusion, Lehanneur’s designs surprise us when we’re least expecting it. He’s known for his talent in bringing together design with technology. Why technology? In his words on his website, Lehanneur says “magic is both a dream and a science.” For this reason the flaming Olympic cauldron isn’t real, but one made of water and light. The environmentally friendly flame effect is produced by 40 projectors and 200 mist diffusers. The flame carried by the torch relay athletes burned in a lantern next to the cauldron, Lehanneur designed the torch too. Its base mimics the ripples in the Seine.   

Although Lehanneur is an avid promoter of experimentation, innovation, and contemporary ideas, there is no getting away from the fact that Lehanneur’s balloon is tethered to Parisian tradition.   

The first hot air balloon flight in history was carried out by the Montgolfier brothers at the Bois de Boulogne in November of 1783. The Montgolfier balloon was a blue-papered canvas invention festooned with Louis XVI’s motif. For the first time, humankind could be released from earth below. Two weeks later in the cold, late autumn, physicist Jacques Charles unveiled his hydrogen gas balloon. From the same spot as Lehanneur’s début in the Jardin des Tuileries, Charles’s brightly striped device was launched in front of 400,000 astonished onlookers. 

Hot air balloons largely remained a rich person’s novelty until eight decades later in 1858, when the famed photographer Nadar took the first aerial photograph from a tethered balloon. In 1863, Nadar cut his earthbound ties and flew 60k from the Champ-de-Mars on October 4, 1863 to nearby Meaux. The science-fiction writer Jules Verne was captivated by Nadar’s exploits and Verne was instantly inspired to write his first full-length adventure novel Five Weeks in a Balloon. The most important visual trope for Verne’s Around the World in 80 days is the image of a jaunty balloon. Verne modeled the hero of his subsequent moon-journey novels on Nadar in which the character’s last name Ardan is an anagram. 

Nadar’s aeronautical expertise was needed for a more serious event. During the Siege of Paris in 1870, Nadar offered his services and equipment to observe the movements of the Prussian enemy. However, balloons became a necessary means to maintain communications with the rest of France, when for four months Prussian troops surrounded Paris, cutting it off from the rest of the world. During the siege, 66 balloons, some made from dress silk, were launched, carrying 102 passengers and 2.5 million letters to safety. Place Saint-Pierre at the bottom of Montmartre was a common departure point.  

The artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes knew how to achieve a moving representation without being mawkishly picturesque. In Puvis de Chavannes Balloon, an austerely dressed woman with a musket, turns towards the mail balloon and silently waves her hand.  

To celebrate France’s recovery after the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, a World’s Fair was held in 1878. The highlight of the Paris Exposition was the colossal captive balloon that engineer and inventor Henri Giffard situated in the Tuileries. The huge balloon carried 50 rapturous travelers at a time, to a height of 600m over the Tuileries. Thirty-five thousand passengers made the ascent, while many others marveled at the spectacle. The Giffard balloon, immortalized by artist Jules Jacquemart, is the ghost of Mathieu Lehanneur’s 2024 design. Jacquemart’s Le Balloon Giffard aux Tuileries en 1878 painting is at the Musée d’Orsay.  

During the same Exposition (Paris had many), the flamboyant actress Sarah Bernhardt took a flight over Paris with Giffard and the painter Georges Clairin. The performer was not averse to self-promotion and the balloon was decorated with the name of her current character, Doña Sol. The trio dined on foie gras and drank champagne from silver goblets. A sudden storm carried the artistic aeronauts far outside of Paris. Upon Lady Sun’s return by train, the director of the Comédie-Française  was furious; he fined Bernhardt a thousand francs for breaking the theater rule requiring actors to ask permission before they left the city. Bernhardt refused to pay up. She wrote about her exploits in a memoir, In the Clouds.

Also in 1878 was the debut of the painter Odilon Redon’s weirdly anachronistic series of eye-balloons. Drawn in gloomy, diffused chalk, Redon transformed a traditional hot-air balloon into a very aware eye. “Mounting toward infinity” is how Redon described his gothic yet surreal entity. The eye-balloon seems to transcend the earthly body to explore otherworldly options. Lehanneur’s quiet orb also gives us the feeling of peaceful shores we cannot yet see.  

Under the aegis of the 1900 World’s Fair was Paris’s first Olympic Games. These Olympics saw the organization of numerous balloon competitions from their location in the Paris suburb of Vincennes. This was the only time the crowd-pleasing balloon event was included in the Games. Contests included those for distance, duration, elevation, and landing on target. The race competition was won by a balloonist who traveled from Paris to Russia.  

At Paris’s Grand Palais, the ”Exposition internationale de locomotion aérienne” was first held in 1909. The tethered balloons made the glass and iron domes look every inch a bird-cage. Those static balloons weren’t going anywhere.  

The balloon has been a French cliché for 250 years. But right now, pay attention to the modern man behind the flame. Lehanneur is going places we can only imagine. With the entreaty to France’s federal government, perhaps Lehanneur’s balloon can stay in Paris beyond the 2024 Paralympic Games. The Olympic flame and Lehanneur’s focus may have moved forward, but hopefully it’s not au revoir for his fabulous flying machine.