King Baudouin Bridge, Footbridge in Charleroi, Wallonia, Belgium
King Baudouin Bridge is a pedestrian bridge over the Sambre in Charleroi, linking the central station esplanade to place Buisset. Its concrete deck, edged with pale green metal railings and lit by four copper Art Deco lampposts designed by Joseph André, carries two bronze sculptures by Constantin Meunier: Le Forgeron au repos and Le Mineur accroupi, placed back to back.
A fixed bridge replaced a swing bridge here in 1937, built with steel beams encased in reinforced concrete and inaugurated on 4 July 1937. French troops blew it up in May 1940 and the German army destroyed the temporary span in 1944; it was rebuilt identically after the war. Works started on 1 March 1994 turned it into a footbridge, inaugurated as pont Roi Baudouin on 12 September 1997.
The bridge links the esplanade of Charleroi-Central station to place Buisset in the Ville-Basse, near the Rive Gauche shopping centre. It sits between the pont Olof Palme and the passerelle Alice Guy, and is reached by metro lines M1 and M2 at the Gare Centrale stop. The deck is reserved for pedestrians.
The two bronze figures on the bridge are copies of elements of Constantin Meunier's Monument to Work, erected in Laeken in 1930. Charleroi had wanted the whole monument but had to settle for ordering copies of the Miner and the Smith in 1937. They now stand back to back, the crouching miner facing place Buisset and the resting smith facing the station.
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