The bridges over the Seine inside Paris

Every crossing here is dated, and the dates are the point: a toll bridge for carrying the sick to the Hôtel-Dieu, a span built to move crowds to the 1900 Exposition, two bridges named for Napoleonic victories and one for a Free French stand in the Libyan desert. Several stand on ground where an earlier bridge came down, in 1499 under the weight of its own houses, in 1709, after the winter of 1407. The record for all of them is unusually good: the city's own heritage boards, the AFGC and Structurae engineering catalogues, and press coverage of the 2024 Games, which put temporary grandstands on one of them and took them away again.

Places in this collection

  • Pont au Change — The name comes from the money changers and goldsmiths whose shops stood on the twelfth-century bridge, between the Conciergerie and the Châ…
  • Pont Notre-Dame — A crossing has stood here since antiquity, rebuilt many times over. One collapse, in 1499, was caused by the weight of the houses that had…
  • Pont d'Arcole — Built in 1856 between the Hôtel de Ville and the Île de la Cité, it replaced an earlier two-span pedestrian suspension bridge and was laid…
  • Pont Louis-Philippe — The king whose name it carries ordered the bridge in 1833, to a design by the Séguin brothers, between the north-west end of the Île Saint-…
  • Pont de Sully — Two separate bridges crossing the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis, built in 1876 as part of the Haussmann works and named after Maximili…
  • Pont d'Austerlitz — The original five-arched bridge was built in 1801 by Becquey de Beaupré and later took the name of Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz in 1805…
  • Pont de Grenelle — The present steel bridge dates from the 1960s and replaced a first crossing of 1873 on the same line. It runs over the Île aux Cygnes just…
  • Pont Rouelle — The steel railway viaduct between the Pont de Bir-Hakeim and the Pont de Grenelle crosses the Île aux Cygnes and carries RER C trains. Stru…
  • Pont de Bir-Hakeim — Jean-Camille Formigé's steel bridge was built between 1903 and 1905 across the Île aux Cygnes, replacing a crossing of 1878, and is arrange…
  • Pont d'Iéna — Built under Napoleon I and named for his victory at the Battle of Jena in 1806, the bridge runs five wide arches on four piers between the…
  • Passerelle Debilly — The metal footbridge between the Avenue de New York and the Quai Branly was put up to move visitors across the Seine during the 1900 World'…
  • Pont de l'Alma — Designed by Paul-Martin Gallocher de Lagalisserie and inaugurated by Napoleon III in 1856, the bridge takes its name from the Battle of the…
  • Pont des Invalides — The first attempt at a crossing here was a single-span suspension bridge begun in 1821 to a design by the engineer Claude Navier, sited whe…
  • Pont de la Concorde — The arch bridge of 1791 links the Quai d'Orsay on the left bank to the Place de la Concorde, and has been known in turn as the Pont Louis X…
  • Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor — The footbridge between the Musée d'Orsay and the Tuileries opened in 1999 as a single metallic span, replacing crossings of 1861 and 1861's…
  • Pont Royal — The third oldest of the Paris bridges, with five elliptical arches, it replaced a ferry that had served the crossing since the mid-1500s. T…
  • Pont du Carrousel — Antoine-Rémy Polonceau's original arch bridge between the Quai des Tuileries and the Quai Voltaire was one of the early Paris uses of cast…
  • Pont des Arts — Built from 1802 between the Louvre, then called the Palais des Arts, and the Institut de France, it was the first metal bridge in Paris, an…
  • Pont Neuf — Despite the name, this is the oldest surviving bridge in Paris, begun in 1578 and inaugurated by Henri IV in 1607. It was built as a double…
  • Pont Alexandre III — Its first stone was laid by Tsar Nicholas II in 1896 and the 152-metre single-span bridge was inaugurated for the 1900 Exposition Universel…

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