Pont de Bonpas, Bridge over the Durance in Vaucluse/Bouches-du-Rhône, France

The Pont de Bonpas carries the RD 907 over the Durance between the south of Vaucluse and the north of Bouches-du-Rhône. The current bridge, completed in 1954, is 500 metres long; the photographs show a light grey reinforced-concrete deck on semi-circular arches, with a red metal transmission tower rising above the roadway. A second bridge nearby carries the A7 motorway.

A stone bridge was built between 1189 and 1199 by the Bridge-Building Brotherhood, who also ran a hostel for travellers; a 1272 flood destroyed it. A 1316 attempt to rebuild with its old stones failed by 1320, and a ferry kept the crossing until the 19th century. A 546-metre timber bridge of 47 spans opened in 1812; nine spans were damaged in an 1886 flood. A 520-metre suspension bridge followed in 1894, destroyed by German forces in 1944, and the present bridge was completed in 1954.

The name comes from Maupas, "bad passage", renamed Bonpas, "good passage", after the bridge-building brothers settled here; Chateaubriand credits them with the change. The Tarasque de Noves, a monster statue carved by the Cavares, was dug up in 1849 near the old ford.

The current 1954 bridge carries the RD 907 between the south of Vaucluse and the north of Bouches-du-Rhône; the A7 motorway crosses the Durance on a separate, parallel bridge beside it. The deck is open to road traffic, and a red transmission tower stands on the structure.

In 1849, while uprooting a mulberry tree near the Maupas ford, Joseph Joachin Meynard unearthed the statue of a monster, now called the Tarasque de Noves, 2.5 metres down on a bed of rough stones. Carved by the Cavares between 50 BCE and the start of the era, it may link the deadly torrent at the ford to a man-eating beast.