ROME (Reuters) -Rome hopes to open the River Tiber to public swimming within five years, the city's mayor said on Thursday, echoing a similar initiative taken in Paris.
French authorities opened the Seine in July to swimming for the first time since 1923, after an extensive clean-up prompted by its use as a venue for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Rome's Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said he had set up a working group for the Tiber initiative and that it would be opened up to national and regional authorities too.
"We are pleased to have already established that this is an entirely achievable goal: within five years, we will be able to swim in the Tiber," Gualtieri said during a visit to the Osaka Expo fair in Japan.
He said there were no estimates yet of the eventual cost but that it would likely be less than the 1.4 billion euros ($1.64 billion) spent on cleaning up the Seine in Paris, given lower levels of pollution in the Tiber.
People were allowed to bathe in the Tiber until the 1960s, when the first restrictions came into effect due to pollution.
Swimming there is currently forbidden, with fines of up to hundreds of euros, though a popular tradition has survived in which a diver jumps into the river from one of Rome's bridges on New Year's Day.
The Tiber cuts through the heart of Rome and used to be an essential transport and trade route. In recent times, however, its banks and waters have been used less by locals.
Rome's municipality has cleaned up the river banks to make it more attractive to citizens and tourists, as part of a wider city makeover for this year's Catholic Jubilee celebrations.
In Paris, plans to make the Seine swimmable took decades and despite its use for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, concerns about water quality have persisted. During the Olympics, many athletes competing in swimming races took medicines to combat E. coli and some events were postponed due to pollution levels.
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(Reporting by Giulia SegretiEditing by Alvise Armellini and Gareth Jones)
