Pont Saint-Martin

About

The Pont-Saint-Martin is a bridge in the municipality of Vienna that crosses the river Gère and connects rue Joseph Martin with the church of Saint-Martin and Place Saint-Martin in the district Vallée de Gère.

History: The Saint-Martin Bridge is not, as many Viennese historians have written, a creation by Jean de Bernin, for it existed long before him. Three Cluny charters, dating from the first half of the 11th century, show us that there was then a double passage on the Gere to go from the city itself to the suburbs of the right bank, and that the land that extended from the city's rampart to the river's loop was precisely called "Between two bridges". We must even hold for certain that these two bridges are of Roman origin. Indeed, the closest to the confluence of the Gère and the Rhône marked the starting point of the "comendium", tending from Vienna to Lyon. And the road from Vienna to Bergusium through the Seventh Valley, whose Cuvière Street was the original extra muros section, necessarily took the bridge to which the Middle Ages called Saint Martin because of the church that was close to it. The bridge redone by Jean de Bernin did not last much...