Pont de pierre

About

The Bordeaux Stone Bridge is a bridge with arches in masonry crossing the Garonne in Bordeaux, a commune in the Gironde department in France. It connects the city centre to the district of La Bastide, on the right bank. The stone bridge, begun under Napoleon I in 1810, and completed under Louis XVIII in 1822, was designed by engineers Claude Deschamps and Jean-Baptiste Basilide Billaudel.

4,000 workers worked there. The structure is 487 metres long and has 17 arches built on 16 batteries. The bridge, with an initial width of 14.6 metres, rose to a width of 19 metres in 1954.

It is built of stone and brick, with the peculiarity of having empty interior spaces. Contrary to a popular belief, it was never decided to build the bridge with 17 arches to match the number of letters of Napoleon Bonaparte. Originally, the bridge was to have 19 arches, but for budgetary and architectural matters, two arches were finally removed from the project in 1819.

The financing of the project, amounting to 6.5 million francs, was mixed: the Bordeaux merchant Pierre Balguerie-Stuttenberg created the Company in 1818...