  ONCE more to the south-western corner of this “bonne ville de Paris.” The first bridge over the Seine within the city boundary, beginning at this end, is the Viaduct d’Auteuil (see p. 320). The second is Pont-Mirabeau, dating from the last decade of the nineteenth century. Pont de Grenelle is of earlier date (1825). The Statue of Liberty we see there (Bartholdi) is a replica in reduced size of that sent to New York. Pont de Passy first spanned the Seine as a mere footway at the time of the Exhibition of 1878, rebuilt in its present form in 1906. Pont d’IÉna has a greater historic interest. Its construction was set about in 1806. It had just been finished when in 1814 BlÜcher and the Allies proposed to blow it up. Royal influence prevailed to save it. It was called thenceforth till 1830 Pont des Invalides. Pont de l’Alma, that emphatically Second-Empire bridge with its four NapolÉonic soldiers, a Zouave, an infantry man, an artillery man, and a chasseur, was built between the years 1854-57. It was still unfinished when on April 2nd, 1856, NapolÉon III and a sumptuously accoutred cortÈge passed across it to present flags to the regiments returned from the Crimea. Pont-des-Invalides was built in 1855. LE PONT DES ARTS ET L’INSTITUT The first stone of the very ornate Pont Alexandre III, formed of a single arch 107 mÈtres long, was laid with A truly historic bridge is the Pont de la Concorde, built between 1787 and 1790, finished with stones off the razed Bastille, and called at first Pont Louis XVI. Louis’ head fell, and the bridge became Pont de la RÉvolution. Twelve immense statues of famous statesmen and warriors were set up on it in 1828. They were considered too big, and in 1851 were taken away to the Cour d’Honneur de Versailles. PONT-NEUF Pont de Solferino, built in 1858, records the victorious Italian campaigns of 1859. Pont-Royal was designed by Mansart and built in 1689 by Dominican monks to replace a smaller, more primitive bridge which had been known successively as Pont-Barlier, Pont-des-Tuileries, Pont-Rouge, and Pont Ste-Anne; it underwent restoration in 1841. Pont des Saints-PÈres, or Pont du Carrousel was one of the last Pont-des-Arts, so called from its vicinity to the Louvre, leading in a straight line from the colonnaded archway of the Court CarrÉe to the Institut, was opened in 1804, restored 1854. Pont-Neuf, the most characteristic of Paris bridges, dates back to the reign of Henri III. The King himself laid its first stone in 1578, but it was not finished till 1603, when Henri IV was King. “Le bon Roi” determined to be the first to cross it on horseback, and while it was still unsafe spurred his thoroughbred along the unfinished bridge way. His lords, hastening to follow where their master led, were jolted out of their saddles, and falling upon the unparapeted structure, rolled into the river and were drowned. Louis XIII set up a statue of his father on horseback on the bridge; the statue of the horse was a gift from Cosimo de’ Medici to Louis’ mother. At the Revolution it was overturned, taken away, and melted down to make cannons for the insurgents. Louis XVIII replaced it by a statue made of the bronze of the first statue of NapolÉon that had been set up on Place VendÔme and that of his general, Desaix, on Place des Victoires. Though set up by the Bourbon King, the figure we see is believed to contain within it a statuette of NapolÉon I and Voltaire’s Henriade. Until 1848 there were shops within the semicircles we see on either side of the old bridge, and beneath the second archway near the right bank there was one of the first hydraulic pumps, known as “la Samaritaine.” Its water was conveyed to the Louvre, the Tuileries, and to houses all around, and fed the famous old fountain built in 1608, destroyed a century later, rebuilt in 1715, The Pont St-Michel we see to-day was built in 1857. The first bridge there, joining the mainland to the island on the Seine, was constructed towards the close of the fourteenth century. That bridge and two successive ones were destroyed by fire. Pont-au-Change, the Money-changers’ Bridge, was in olden days a wooden construction which went by the names Pont de la Marchandise and Pont-aux-Oiseaux. Jewellers as well as money-changers plied their trade along its planks, perhaps also bird merchants. It was a little higher up the river in its early twelfth century days and was often flooded. It was badly burnt, too, more than once; then in the seventeenth century was entirely rebuilt of stone, and bronze statues of the royal family, Louis XIII, Louis XIV as a child, and Anne d’Autriche, set up there. In the century following the houses upon it were all cleared away and in 1858 it was again rebuilt. The Petit-Pont joins the Île to the left bank at the very same spot where the Romans made a bridge across the river, one of two which spanned the Seine in their day, and on beyond. Like all town bridges of the Middle Ages it was made of wood and each side thickly built The other bridge of Roman times, succeeding no doubt a rude primitive bridge, stretched where the Pont Notre-Dame now spans the river. The Roman bridge, built on staves, was overthrown by the Normans in 861. Rebuilt as Pont Notre-Dame in 1413, it crashed to pieces some eighty years later, carrying down with it the house of a famous printer of the day. It was alternatively destroyed and rebuilt several times till its last reconstruction in 1853. Its houses were the first in France to be numbered (1507). There were sixty-eight of them and the numbering was done in gold or gilded ciphers. All these old houses were pulled down in 1786. Pont Notre-Dame was the “bridge of honour.” Sovereigns coming to Paris in state crossed it to enter the city. Close up to it stood for nearly two hundred years—1670 to 1856— Pont d’Arcole, built as we now see it in 1854, succeeded a wooden bridge erected in 1828 with the name Pont de la GrÈve, commonly called Pont de la Balance. It gained its present name, recalling NapolÉon’s victory of 1796, in the Revolution of 1830, when a youth at the head of a band of insurgents rushed upon the bridge waving the tricolor and shouting: “If I die, remember my name is Arcole.” Pont-au-Double, so called because to cross it passengers paid a double toll for the benefit of the HÔtel-Dieu, is a nineteenth-century construction, replacing the original bridge of the name built in the sixteenth century, a little higher up the river. Pont de l’ArchevÊchÉ dates from 1828. Pont St-Louis, joining l’Île de la CitÉ to l’Île St-Louis, was built in 1614 as a wooden bridge painted red and called, therefore, Pont-Rouge. Like all wooden erections of the age, it was damaged by fire, and in the eighteenth century at the time of the Revolution, “icebergs” on the Seine knocked it over. An iron footbridge was put up in its place and remained till 1862, when the bridge we see was built. Pont Louis-Philippe was built in the same year to replace a suspension bridge paying toll. Pont de la Tournelle, built as we see it in 1851, began as a wooden bridge of fourteenth-century erection. Pont Marie was not, as one might suppose, named in honour of the Virgin, nor after Marie de’ Medici, who laid its first stone. It simply records the name of its PARIS Limite des Arrondts |
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