Swimming in Paris: Culture and Contradictions

What can a swim lane reveal about a city’s soul? In this episode, we slip into the shimmering world of Paris’s public pools—architectural gems from the Art Deco era where history, culture, and chaos flow together. Through the eyes of a competitive swimmer, we explore coed showers, unruly lanes, and a fiercely French devotion to personal liberty that turns every session into a study in etiquette… or the lack of it. But beneath the frustration lies a deeper beauty: sunlit tiles, echoes of decades past, and the unmistakable feeling that swimming in Paris is less about the workout and more about communion—with the water, the city, and the centuries it carries.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/03/world/europe/paris-france-swimming-pools.html