History of the red cap of liberty, which inspired the 2024 Paris Olympics mascots, Les Phryges

The Olympic Phryge and the Paralympic Phryge are taking the lead of a tribe which always has its trainers on 👟
What could be better than little Phrygian caps to lead the revolution through sport and accompany us to the #Paris2024 Games! pic.twitter.com/hUjFI09zZM

— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) November 14, 2022

What is the history of this cap, and why has France chosen it to represent the upcoming games?

Les Phryges: The cap for the common people

For three days in July 1830, French Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix watched as the grand streets and boulevards of Paris filled up with protestors — regular, working-class and middle-class people — who had had enough of their Bourbon king Charles X. They forced Charles X to flee to Versailles and Rambouillet, and to announce a week later that he was stepping down from the throne.

Delacroix commemorated the heroism of the people in one of his most evocative paintings, La Liberté Guidant le Peuple (Liberty Leading the People). At the centre of the work is Marianne, the figure meant to represent the ideal of Liberty, surrounded by revolutionaries. She is dressed in symbolic garments that include, on her head, a limp, brimless red cap known as the Phrygian cap that the common people of France wore.

Liberty Leading the People (1830), a painting by Eugène Delacroix.

Symbol of freedom

The origin of the Phrygian cap, also known as the liberty cap and bonnet rouge, is tied to the history of suppressed people. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “The Phrygian cap originated in the ancient country of Phrygia (in modern Turkey), and is represented in ancient Greek art as the type of headdress worn not only by Phrygians but by all inhabitants of Anatolia and of nations farther east.”

The cap’s floppy design can be traced to the pileus or pilos hats that were given as signs of freedom to Roman slaves. In Greek and Roman mythology, the twins Castor and Pollux hatched from an egg and are shown wearing the pileus —just as slaves are seen as being born into a new life with their freedom.

Political Colours

Headdress became a matter of importance in asserting political identity and loyalty during the French Revolution (1787–99).

“Hats adorned with a tricolour ribbon cockade became symbols of patriotism, while the liberty cap or bonnet rouge became a symbol of the Revolution,” according to the Metropolitan Museum. The French Revolution was also the time that the earliest representations of a woman wearing a Phrygian cap — the allegorical Marianne — made an appearance in art.

During the Third Republic in France, announced in 1870, Marianne began to appear in statues and busts either as a revolutionary figure or a wise woman. Incidentally, in some cases, it was thought that the Phrygian cap was too seditious and Marianne was made to wear a diadem or a crown. Nonetheless, to this day, the red cap is associated in France with liberty. It is also an international symbol of liberty present in many emblems in North and South America.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Committee said they are confident that their mascots, representing a new generation of Phryges, will write another glowing chapter of history. “Phryges’ aim to show that sport can change everything, and that it deserves to have a prominent place in our society,” Paris 2024 brand director Julie Matikhine said, as reported by Reuters.

The Olympic Games in 2024 will be held from July 26 to August 11, while the Paralympic Games will take place between August 28 and September 8, and two mascots have been created to represent both events.