Pont Saint-Michel is a bridge linking place Saint-Michel on the Left Bank of Paris to the Île de la Cité. It was named after the nearby chapel of Saint-Michel, by the Sainte Chapelle, in the Palais de Justice. The present 62m-long bridge dates to 1857.
Pont Saint-Michel is served by the Metro station Saint-Michel.
History
First built in 1378, it has been rebuilt several times, the last being in 1857.
The medieval bridge
The construction of a stone bridge was decided upon in 1378 by the Parlement de Paris after an accord with the chapter of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, the prévôt de Paris, and the city's burghers. A location for it was chosen downstream of Petit-Pont, on the line of rue Saint-Denis, from the Grand-Pont on the rive droite and of rue de la Harpe on the rive gauche. This allowed a direct route across Île de la Cité.
The prévôt de Paris, Hugues Aubriot, thus charged with overseeing the project, which was funded by the king. Construction lasted from 1379 to 1387. Once complete, the Parisians named the bridge Pont-Neuf (not to be confused with the present-day Pont-Neuf), Petit-Pont-Neuf or Pont Saint-Michel dit le Pont-Neuf.
As was common in the Middle Ages, the bridge's sides were quickly filled with houses. During the 1407-1408 winter, one of the longest and most severe known in the Middle Ages, ice carried by the frozen Seine hit the bridge, causing it to collapse together with its houses. Due to France's difficulties in the Hundred Years' War, the bridge was immediately rebuilt in wood. This material proved less resistant than the previous stone bridge and the Parlement de Paris decided in 1444 to allocate all money raised from fines to building a new stone bridge on the site.
The appearance of this second bridge is known from one miniature painting in the Heures d'Étienne Chevalier, painted by Jean Fouquet. This shows a bridge resting on high wooden piers, as well as wattle and daub or wood and plaster houses with a single level roofline along the whole length of the bridge.
The Renaissance bridge
A replacement bridge was built at the same time the Pont Marie was under construction. Owned by the king, it was more substantial than the Pont Marie and never ran into the kind of structural troubles both the Pont Marie and the Pont Neuf encountered.[1]
The work started in 1617 and was completed in 1623, using foundations similar to the ones used in the Rialto Bridge and the Pont des Boucheries. These foundations used wooden piles topped by a wooden platform over which the specifications required lower stone courses of 5 feet (1.5 m) to 6 feet (1.8 m) long by 3 feet (0.91 m) to 4 feet (1.2 m) thick.[1]
Built with four spans in the form of circular arcs, the roadway sloped up to the center of the bridge with a grade of over 6%. The two larger spans were approximately 46 feet (14 m) long, while the two shorter spans on either side were approximately 33 feet (10 m) long. The widest of the old Paris bridges, it was designed to hold two rows of houses. While an order was issued in 1786 to remove all houses from Paris bridges, the ones on this bridge remained until no later than 1808.[1]
The modern bridge
The present 62m-long bridge dates to 1857, requiring only seven months for construction from the date the older bridge was closed to traffic[1], and was designed on three 17.2m arches by Paul-Martin Gallocher de Lagalisserie and Paul Vaudrey. It was the site of many of the killings of the Paris massacre of 1961.
Location
Bridge location on the Seine:
Gallery
Bibliography
- (French) P. Lorentz et D. Sandron, Atlas de Paris au Moyen Âge, Paris, 2006, Parigramme.
References
- ^ a b c d Whitney, Charles S. [1929] (2003). Bridges of the World: Their Design and Construction (in English). Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, pp.143-144. ISBN 0-486-42995-4.
External links
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