Pont Notre-Dame, Steel arch bridge in 4th arrondissement, France
Pont Notre-Dame is a steel arch bridge spanning the Seine near Notre-Dame Cathedral, connecting the Right Bank with Île de la Cité. It has five arches and carries motor vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians across its roadway.
A bridge has stood here since antiquity, when the Roman Grand-Pont carried the cardo maximus over the Seine. Charles VI inaugurated a wooden Notre-Dame bridge in 1413; it collapsed in 1499. Fra Giovanni Giocondo directed a stone replacement completed in 1507, and the present five-arch bridge dates from 1853, rebuilt in metal with three arches in 1912 and inaugurated in 1919.
This bridge crosses the Seine at a location where people and goods have moved between the banks for centuries. Today, pedestrians and cyclists use it as an ordinary passage through the city.
The bridge is straightforward to cross on foot or by bicycle and offers a direct path between the banks. Conditions are best outside peak traffic times when the road is less congested.
Latin inscriptions beneath the arches recall Fra Giovanni Giocondo, an Italian architect who oversaw an earlier stone version of the crossing. These inscriptions are easy to miss, yet they speak to continuity across different building phases of the site.
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