This is a photo of the 10km swim river-race through Paris on the Seine. It was held from 1905 to 1940. “La Traversée de Paris” – the Paris open swim which in the early 1900s drew crowds to watch international swimmers in what was considered by spectators to be the front-crawl equivalent of cycling’s Tour de France. The building in the background is the Louvre and the bridge is the Le Pont du Carrousel which was demolished in 1930. Scanned from the original French 6x4cm glass negative. View full size.