The Opening Ceremony on July 26 next year is set to take the form of a pageant on the River Seine.

Each nation is to arrive by boat, travelling a distance of six kilometres from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Pont d'Iéna, to finish at the Trocadéro, opposite the Eiffel Tower.

It is understood that the Flame cannot be installed at the Top of the Tower for technical reasons because of the antennas installed there, but it will be hosted on a site there throughout the Games until the Closing Ceremony on August 11.

"It’s been a work in progress for the last two years," an unnamed source told news agency Reuters.

"The venue for the lighting of the flame on the Opening Day of the Olympic Games has not yet been decided."

If the plans are confirmed, it will be the third successive time that the Flame for a Summer Olympics has been placed in a waterside city location for the duration of the Games.

In 2016, the Flame burned at Candelaria in Rio's Naval Quarter.

In Tokyo, it was sited at the Yume no Ohashi Bridge, another waterfront location.

Plans to fly a giant French Tricolour from the Eiffel Tower as part of the Tokyo to Paris Handover Ceremony in August 2021 were abandoned because of high winds.

Although Paris staged the Olympic Games in 1900 and 1924, the Flame had not yet been introduced to the Olympic ritual.

It was taken to the Eiffel Tower as part of the Athens 2004 global Torch Relay.

Stéphane Diagana, 400 metres hurdles gold medallist in the 1997 World Athletics Championships, carried the Flame on a zip wire from the first floor of the Tower before handing it on to Laura Flessel, double Olympic épéee gold medallist in 1996.

Diagana was also a Torch Bearer when Flame returned to the Eiffel Tower during the Paris leg of the Beijing 2008 Relay.

On that occasion organisers were forced to curtail proceedings after extensive demonstrations against China's human rights record and numerous attempts to extinguish the Flame.

Campaigners scaled the Eiffel Tower and displayed a black banner with the Olympic rings depicted as handcuffs.

French organisers have not indicated when an announcement will be made about the final location of the Flame for Paris 2024.

They are set to announce the itinerary for the Torch in France on June 23, a date designated as Olympic Day to commemorate the anniversary of the 1894 meeting in Paris which undertook to revive the Olympic Games for the modern era.

The Flame is scheduled to arrive on French soil on May 8 next year 4 in Marseille after a sea voyage from Athens on the tall ship Belem.

Olympic beach volleyball and Paralympic blind football are also set to be staged during Paris 2024 at the the Champ de Mars in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.