Ponte Carrega, Bicycle bridge and pedestrian zone in Molassana district, Genoa, Italy.
Ponte Carrega is a six-arch stone bridge over the Bisagno in the Molassana district of Genoa. It was inaugurated in 1788 and originally had eighteen arches; demolitions in the early 19th century and in 1923, when via Lungobisagno Dalmazia was built, reduced it to six. It is now a pedestrian and bicycle crossing.
In 1747 the inhabitants of Montesignano asked the Republic of Genoa to build a stable crossing over the Bisagno, since the eastern bank had no road. Construction began in the 18th century and a plaque in the votive shrine once at the bridge's centre gave 1788 as the inauguration date. The structure originally had eighteen arches; in 1800 volunteers from Val Bisagno fought beside General André Masséna's troops to defend the hill and the bridge during the Siege of Genoa.
The name Carrega is debated: some trace it to the Carrega family, who funded repairs and owned land here; others to the Genoese 'pônte de Carræ', from 'carraie', the carts that crossed since Roman times, a name recorded in Latin documents of 1276 and 1487. Camillo Sbarbaro's prose 'Tramonto a Ponte Carrega', in Trucioli (1920), describes the bridge as a 'red flower'.
The bridge now carries six stone arches after the 1923 works by the Consorzio Ligure delle Cooperative, which cost 120,000 lire and tied the span to the left-bank embankment road. Approach it from via Lungobisagno Dalmazia on the east bank; the structure was shortened when that road was built. The 2012 demolition threat ended with regional heritage protection and the Bisagno flood-diversion channel.
In 2012 the bridge was ranked first in Liguria in the FAI census I Luoghi del Cuore. That same year a municipal road-widening project threatened demolition; residents' mobilisation led the regional superintendency to place it under protection, and in 2015 the city council voted unanimously for its safeguard.
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