The Seine is cleaned up, but Paris still has a unsightly problem it wants to sweep off the streets as the Olympics opening ceremony looms.

Rats are well known to boldly scuttle along Parisian streets and in the popular park behind the Eiffel Tower.

But with the world’s eyes on the city, officials want to keep rodents out of sight to project a cleaner image.

“All of the Olympic sites and celebration areas were analysed [for rats] before the Games,” deputy mayor Anne-Claire Boux, who has responsibility for public health, told AFP.

Measures to keep Olympic sites rat-free have included a deep clean to remove food residues and blocking sewer exit points around Olympic sites.

Mechanical traps and chemical solutions were also used in areas with particularly high rat populations.

The city’s rodent exterminators also advised the Paris organising committee on how to design Games sites to keep them clean.

“I’m not at all worried [about rats],” deputy mayor in charge of waste Antoine Guillou told AFP.

“On the contrary, the Games will help us show definitively that this idea that you run into lots of rats in Paris is false.

“There are some, we deal with them. But they’re not an issue specific to Paris, nor on the scale that is sometimes suggested in a caricatural way.”

Fight gives way to truce

Despite efforts to keep rats underground, Paris does not want to exterminate the rodents once and for all.

“Ultimately, no one should aim to exterminate Paris’ rats, and they’re useful in maintaining the sewers,” Boux said.

“The point is that they should stay in the sewers.”

Paris has previously battled its rat population through air-tight rubbish bins and, in 2017, mass extermination. Birth control measures have also been suggested.

But officials have since softened their stance – or given up – as the rats are not considered to pose a “significant” public health risk.

A 2021-2023 study dubbed Project Armageddon aimed to understand the biology and ecology of Paris’ rats, the risk of disease transmission to humans, and to “fight against prejudices to help Parisians live better with rats”.

A committee was also formed in 2023 to find a way to cohabitate with rats that would be “not unbearable” for Parisians.