Pont de la Concorde (Paris)

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Pont de la Concorde (1791)
The bridge in 1829, with the 12 statues
Crosses	River Seine
Locale	Paris, France
Design	Jean-Rodolphe Perronet
Total length	153
Width	18
Coordinates	48°51′49″N 02°19′10″E / 48.86361, 2.31944

Pont de la Concorde (1932)
View from the passerelle Solférino
Crosses	River Seine
Locale	Paris, France
Design	Henri Lang
Total length	153
Width	34
Coordinates	48°51′49″N 02°19′10″E / 48.86361, 2.31944

For other uses, see Pont de la Concorde (disambiguation).

The Pont de la Concorde is an arch bridge across the River Seine in Paris between quai des Tuileries at place de la Concorde (Right Bank) and quai d'Orsay (Left Bank). It has formerly been known as pont Louis XVI, pont de la Révolution, pont de la Concorde, pont Louis XVI during the Bourbon Restoration (1814), and again in 1830, pont de la Concorde, the name it has retained to this day. It is served by the Metro stations Assemblée nationale and Concorde.

[edit] History

The architect Jean-Rodolphe Perronet was commissioned in 1787 with this new bridge. It had been planned since 1755, when construction of place Louis XV (now place de la Concorde) began, to replace the ferry that crossed the river at that point. Construction continued in the midst of the turmoil of the French Revolution, using the dimension stones taken from the demolished Bastille (taken by force on 14 July 1789) for its masonry. It was completed in 1791.^[1]

In 1810, Napoléon I placed along the sides of the bridge the statues of eight French generals killed in battle during the campaigns of the First French Empire. On the Bourbon Restoration these were replaced with twelve monumental marble statues, including four of the "grands ministres" (Suger, Sully, Richelieu, Colbert), four royal generals (Du Guesclin, Bayard, Condé, Turenne) and four sailors (Duguay-Trouin, Duquesne, Suffren, Tourville). However, this collection of statues proved too heavy for the bridge, and Louis-Philippe I had them removed and transferred to Versailles.

Traffic across the bridge became very congested and the bridge had to be widened on both sides between 1930 and 1932, doubling the width of the original bridge. The engineers Deval and Malet nevertheless took care to preserve the neoclassical architecture of the original. It was renovated one last time in 1983. Today, this bridge bears the brunt of Paris's road traffic (except for those of the Boulevard Périphérique).