The scene will undoubtedly remind some of one of the epic moments from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. But instead of announcing the arrival of Sauron’s troops or the return of the king, it is the return of the Olympic flame that will be hailed. Several medieval watchtowers in Roussillon will light up on the evening of May 7 to announce the approach of Belem to the French coast. The ship carrying the Olympic flame from Greece to Marseille is expected in Marseille the next day.
But for the occasion, around fifteen medieval signal towers in the Pyrénées-Orientales, a few hundred kilometers to the west, will salute the event with powerful spotlights. This show will be visible to all residents of the department bordering Spain, specifies the organizer of the event, the green electricity supply company Llum.
Built between the 12th and 14th centuries, signal towers were defensive elements intended to alert and transmit information from one place to another, day and night.
The Olympic flame is due to arrive in Marseille on May 8, after a journey of more than ten days from Athens aboard the three-masted Belem (58 meters), built in Nantes in 1896, the year of the first modern Olympic Games.