The Seine carried freight barges and merchant vessels for centuries before the first passenger steamboat service launched in 1867. Batobus, the city's purpose-built hop-on hop-off network, began operations in 1989 with a fleet designed for shallow-draft navigation and low-profile clearance beneath the capital's thirty-seven bridges. The service connects nine landing stages between the Eiffel Tower and Jardin des Plantes, each dock positioned within two hundred meters of a major monument or museum quarter. River transport shaped Paris long before Haussmann's boulevards. The Right Bank quays served as the city's commercial spine from the medieval period through the industrial age, while the Left Bank developed as the intellectual and ecclesiastical center. Today's boat tour Paris hop on hop off routes follow these historical channels, passing the Louvre's riverside façade, the Gothic flying buttresses of Notre-Dame, and the neoclassical Institut de France. The waterway drops eleven meters from east to west across the city, a gradient imperceptible to passengers but critical to the engineering of the upstream locks at Suresnes. The fleet operates year-round with enclosed lower decks and open upper levels, though winter schedules compress to match reduced daylight hours. Each vessel seats one hundred fifty passengers and completes the full circuit in approximately ninety minutes without stops. Nine docking points serve distinct quarters: Port de la Bourdonnais for the Eiffel Tower, Quai de Louvre for the museum complex, Saint-Germain-des-Prés for the literary district, and Jardin des Plantes for the natural history collections. Frequency varies by season, with boats departing every seventeen minutes during summer months and every twenty-five minutes from November through March. The 24-hour pass permits unlimited boarding across the network, allowing visitors to structure their itinerary around museum hours and neighborhood exploration rather than tour schedules.