The last time there was full-scale river swimming in Berlin’s city centre, before access was outlawed a century ago, there were probably fewer inflatable unicorns and fluorescent pool noodles.
But this week, a “Dip-Dip-Hurrah” demonstration to push for the lifting of the roaring 20s-era ban saw about 300 people, many with colourful swimming caps and assorted flotation devices, bob down the Spree river as the golden-hour sun bathed the old Prussian monuments of the historic Mitte district in a warm light.
Across Europe, emboldened by a nine-year plan to clean up the Seine River in time for last year’s Paris Olympics, city residents are pushing authorities to make their waterways swimmable.
Here, Guardian reporters detail some of urban Europe’s wild swimming hotspots – both those that are coming, and those that have been delighting city swimmers for years.
Berlin, Germany
Activists from the Flussbad Berlin pressure group have been lobbying since 2012 to lift the restrictions on swimming in the Spree imposed in May 1925, when an explosion in the city’s population and an industrial boom made the quality of the river water dangerous to human health.
Co-organiser Jan Edler said improvements in sanitation meant expert testing found that on more than 90% of days during the May-September season, conditions were fine for a dip.
“What we’d like to see is consenting adults being given access to the information on a regular basis via a sign or an app, and then being allowed to make their own choice whether to go in,” he said.
Only when heavy rainfall causes human waste to overflow from the sewage system and washes oil and tyre rubber from streets into the Spree does the water get toxic, Edler said. The last time this happened was in November, according to Flussbad.
City officials have also cited the potential hazard of wartime munitions lodged in the riverbed, something Edler dismissed. “You can get that in a lake too.”
The 150-metre-long stretch of water chosen for the demonstration was where the last central “swim station” was in operation 100 years ago, just off the Unter den Linden boulevard opposite today’s Humboldt Forum museum built in the old Hohenzollern palace’s image.
“This part of town is basically for tourists, not for Berliners, and this feels like we’re reclaiming it,” said real estate consultant Robin Härdter, 32, as he wrapped himself in a towel.
Architect Lina Lahiri, 44, emerged glistening, shivering and exhilarated from a long swim in the Spree, whose temperature on Tuesday evening measured 21.3C. “I thought it would be dirtier! I tried to keep my mouth closed but then I wanted to talk to everyone around me,” she said with a laugh.
“It would be wonderful if this protest got the ball rolling but even though there’s a European-wide movement [for urban swimming], Germany is super bureaucratic – it could take ages. Fingers crossed.”
Although the Berlin area is dotted with dozens of accessible lakes, the civil servant Jan Köttke said there was nothing quite like splashing around downtown.
“The view of the city is completely different from down there,” said Köttke, 53, pointing at the rippling green-blue water. “You’re here in the historic centre with all the monuments but it’s not that heavy, serious perspective – it’s more playful.”
Although officials from the Mitte district have expressed support for a trial period of Spree swimming in 2026, a spokesperson for the city’s environment department, Frank Preiss, said studies to determine if “the Spree is suited hygienically for swimming are still unclear and completely open”. Results, he said, were expected later this year.
On Tuesday, resplendent in a pink bathrobe and yellow bucket hat, 77-year-old Ulrich Fitzke said he was ready to take the plunge. “Because I love to swim in the open water, because it costs €6-8 admission everywhere else, because it’s marvellous weather,” he said.
Fitzke, a retired electrician trainer who lives in the ex-communist planned district of Marzahn on the city’s eastern fringe, said he had no concerns about potential contaminants in the water.
“I’m a farmer’s son and grew up swimming in ponds with thousands of catfish and sometimes leeches that sometimes would get you right here,” he said pointing to his arm. “I’m not worried.”
Deborah Cole
Paris, France
After a 100-year ban on swimming in Paris’s Seine River, mostly due to the risk from unclean water and bacteria from human waste, the city’s bathers will at last be able to take a dip in the river this summer.
Efforts to clean up Paris’s murky river water for swimmers were accelerated and given a funding boost for last year’s Olympics, when triathlon and open-water athletes competed in the Seine.
More than €1bn (£850m) has been invested in wastewater management, treatment plants, filtering stations and storm basins to lower the river’s bacterial contamination from faecal waste.
Tempting Parisians back into the Seine was one of the Games’ key aims, in part as a means of cooling off amid growing summer heatwaves.
But because of strong currents and Paris’s heavy river traffic of freight and tourist tour boats, city swimmers won’t have a vast open expanse of the Seine, but rather designated, timetabled spots with lifeguards and changing facilities.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said the experience would nonetheless be “much wilder than swimming in a pool” and the infrastructure would be as subtle as possible.
Three city bathing spots will open in Paris from 5 July until 31 August.
Near the finance ministry at Bercy in the east of the city, swimmers will be shielded from boat traffic by a concrete barrier.
At Grenelle in the west of the city, with a view of the Eiffel Tower, there will be a structured pontoon and a marked-off swimming area 60 metres long by 20 metres wide.
In the historic centre of the city near Pont de Sully, looking on to the Île Saint-Louis, swimmers will have slightly more space, marked off by a line of yellow buoys. However, because of the busy tourist boat tours coming past Notre Dame cathedral in the afternoons, the swimming area will only be open from 8am to 11.30am, and all day on Sundays.
The challenge of stopping swimmers simply jumping into the Seine at random spots outside the designated zones remains. Signs, guards and boat patrols have been planned to prevent this.
Angelique Chrisafis
Oslo, Norway
When the sun is shining in Norway’s capital (and even when it’s not), swimmers plunge into the salty fjord from packed floating saunas and the city beaches are full of paddling toddlers. It is difficult to believe that the waters around Oslo were not always like this.
Until an enormous cleanup process that began in 2006, decades of industry mistreatment, runoff from the city and waste dumping had left the inner Oslofjord heavily polluted.
But after multiple remediations of the seabed, the removal of contaminated material from the harbour basin and the introduction of a huge water and wastewater project, completed in 2015, today it is an urban swimming paradise.
The radical turnaround is perhaps best exemplified by Oslo Sauna Association’s 26 floating saunas across seven sites in the city.
Formed in 2016 by diplomats from the ministry of foreign affairs’ ice swimming club, it now has a membership of 18,000 and is pretty much fully booked from 7am until 11pm from October to April. Last year 260,000 people visited their saunas, which are accessible for both locals and tourists who swim-sauna-swim-sauna on repeat for as long as they can.
The turnaround has transformed the city, said Ragna Marie Fjeld, the association’s secretary general.
In the beginning, she said, entrepreneurs and politicians were sceptical, fearing properties near the saunas might lose value as a result.
“But now they all beg us to come to their new building projects because this is something they want,” she said. “You could say the tables have turned.”
Currently the water temperature is about 14C but in the winter it dips to zero and in the summer it gets up to 20C. “A lot of people I talk to say the saunas have made Oslo much cooler and made it the city they want to live in. Part of what makes Oslo great.”
Miranda Bryant
Copenhagen, Denmark
On summer evenings, Copenhagen’s harbours are lined with people hanging out by the water and swimming in designated areas. Winter swimming is also increasingly popular, even though the water temperature can plunge as low as zero.
Mikkel Bendixsen, who has been swimming in the Danish capital for a decade and started his own free-of-charge swimming club, KBH Vinterbad, said the networking potential of these bracing dips was not to be underestimated.
“It’s nice to do and you motivate each other. Everyone brings something – coffee or whatnot,” he said. “If it’s not crazy wind or rain then we will hang out and talk. Maybe the conversation is better because everyone’s high on endorphins.”
Sauna clubs are also popular; as soon as a new one opens, Bendixsen said, it instantly fills up.
The city’s swimmable status is not without challenges: earlier in the year the red flags temporarily went up on bathing areas in the harbour after Denmark’s largest wastewater company accidentally released 12,000 cubic metres of wastewater into one of Copenhagen’s rivers.
But Bendixsen said sewage overflow was not often a problem and it was easy to check the water quality, which is closely monitored, online.
Urban swimming was a great unifier in Copenhagen, he said, and was integral for socialising – especially in summer. “A lot of people in the summer hang out in these spots and everybody is close to the coastline.”
Miranda Bryant
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
They don’t call the Netherlands a “waterland” for nothing. Amsterdam has a bay, the IJ, and nine official wild swimming sites where you can escape the summer heat.
There are multiple city beaches, like the Sloterplas beach in Nieuw-West or the Ouderkerkerplas, further afield by the village Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. Like 6 million visitors a year, you can swim, sail or row in the lakes of the planted forest, Amsterdamse Bos.
Water quality is measured for bacteria and algae. There is a national website where you can check indicators and find out the availability of facilities such as bike parking and lavatories.
And what of the canals? While houseboats are now plumbed into the sewage system, it’s generally still not recommended to go swimming in any old canal. There are warnings on the side of certain waterways – for example, old industrial areas near the harbour where the bottom of the water contains heavy metal.
If you are simply desperate to experience swimming through the canals yourself, it’s probably best to wait for the September Amsterdam City Swim, when thousands swim from the Keizersgracht to the Marineterrein harbourside – with famous alumni even including Queen Máxima.
This weekend, the Swimmable Cities alliance will hold what it called the world’s first summit dedicated to the topic of urban swimming. The Rotterdam event will bring together 150 participants from four continents to drive what organisers heralded as “bold action in climate adaptation, community wellbeing and urban waterfront regeneration”.
Senay Boztas