Olympic torch is lit in spectacular ceremony in ancient Olympia to mark 100-day countdown for the Paris 2024 Games... with flame to arrive in France next month ahead of July 26 opening ceremony

The torch for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was lit in ancient Olympia in a traditional ceremony on Tuesday, marking the final stretch of the seven-year preparations for the Games' start on July 26.

Greek actress Mary Mina, playing the role of high priestess, lit the torch using a backup flame instead of a parabolic mirror due to cloudy skies for the start of a relay in Greece and France. 

It will culminate with the lighting of the Olympic flame in the French capital at the opening ceremony.

From the ancient stadium in Olympia, a relay of torchbearers will carry the flame more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) through Greece until the handover to Paris Games organisers in Athens on April 26. 

The first torchbearer was Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, a gold medalist in 2021 in Tokyo. He will run to a nearby monument that contains the heart of French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the driving force behind the modern revival of the games. 

The next runner will be Laure Manaudou, a French swimmer who won three medals at Athens in 2004. She will hand over to senior European Union official Margaritis Schinas, a Greek.

The flame will then travel from Athens' port of Piraeus on the Belem, a French three-masted sailing ship built in 1896 - the year of the first modern games in Athens.

The flame will be taken to Marseille - a city founded by Greek colonists some 2,600 years ago - on May 8 and then gradually making its way to Paris ahead of the July 26 opening ceremony. 

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the Olympic flame will pass by the site of the 2015 Islamist attack on the Bataclan concert hall as well as the Shoah Memorial as it makes its way through Paris in July.

'This torch is a message of peace, a message of friendship between peoples, which is all the stronger at a time when the world is in such bad shape,' Hidalgo told France 2 TV from Olympia, Greece.

In Paris, torch bearers will also pass historic landmarks such the Place de la Concorde square and the National Assembly and through working-class neighborhoods, including Belleville or Porte de la Chapelle in the east and in the north, Hidalgo said.

The Paris city hall, which is hosting the flame on July 14 when France celebrates Bastille Day, will stay open all night so that 'visitors and Parisians can see this symbol of fraternal transmission across the planet' she added.

Paris' Shoah Memorial is dedicated to Jewish history during the Second World War.

In November 2015, a group of Islamist gunmen targeted the Bataclan music hall, as well as bars, restaurants and the Stade de France sports stadium, killing a total of 130 people.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he would strive to obtain an Olympics truce, adding he had the Middle East conflict in mind, as well as the war in Ukraine and Sudan.