Macron Says Booksellers Can Stay Put During Olympic Games

A bouquiniste on the Seine last year.Credit...Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Gold-leafed books with engravings, 200-year-old leather-bound books, books so rare and precious they are wrapped carefully in cellophane before being nestled into place inside an antique wooden box set on the Seine’s stony shoulder for students, intellectuals, power brokers and tourists to browse.

For centuries, the wooden bookstalls have been a fixture in the heart of Paris, and so when the city’s police, citing security concerns, ordered them closed during this summer’s Olympic Games, an uproar ensued. Now President Emmanuel Macron has stepped in.

In a decision that resounded across the city this…