The Seine is overflowing, but these archival photos of 1910 Paris show this has happened before
The Seine is flooding in Paris, but it's not the first time.
On Tuesday, the Seine's water level was sitting at 16 feet — the current flood emergency level is "orange," the highest warning below "red." But in 1910, Parisians had to hop aboard rowboats, make deliveries through windows, and construct makeshift pathways through the City of Lights when the Seine rose to 28 feet, causing what's known as the Great Flood of Paris.
Italian weekly newspaper La Domenica del Corriere published an illustration of the floods on its front cover on Jan. 30, 1910. It's a wildly over-the-top but undeniably effective representation of the city's situation: Citizens tumbling out of trains into row boats, using wood for pathways and being carried above the water level. Sure, it's artistic license in action, but it gets the point across.
Luckily, we don't have to rely on such a dramatic illustration to get an idea of what the Great Flood actually looked like. We dug into the archives to take a look at the worst flood Paris has ever experienced.
Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror.
