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A little history of Pont de la Tournelle

The bridge | Anecdotrip.com / CC-BY-NC-SA
Bridge Pont de la Tournelle

Tournelle? The bridge was named after a square tower included in the medieval wall raised by king Philip Augustus. In this tower they used to lock prisoners fated to galleys and brought to Marseille harbour.

They raised a wooden bridge called pont de Fust de l'Ile Notre-Dame. This wooden bridge linking Saint-Louis island was many times rebuilt: in 1637, frost destroyed it.

In 1648, it went to ruin! 3 years later, river Seine floods demolished half of the building. This time, in 1656, engineer Christophe Marie re-raised it with stone!

Phew, from that moment... no more events! Our bridge spent happy days... until 1851, when they re-raised it in the axis of the pont Marie, and then in 1929, when they put a statue of sainte Geneviève on one of the pier.

But why do we find this statue, here? Because we are here where they translated the sainte’s reliquary, in 885...

About the the author

Vinaigrette
I'm fond of strolls and History, with juicy and spicy details!