Pont du Carrousel

Last crawled date: 4 years, 1 month ago

Begun in 1831 in the prolongation of the rue des Saints-Pères1] on the Left Bank, the original bridge was known under that name until its inauguration, in 1834, when king Louis-Philippe named it Pont du Carrousel, because it opened on the Right Bank river frontage of the Palais du Louvre near the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in front of the Tuileries. In 1906, after seven decades of use, serious restoration was required; the former wooden elements were replaced with beaten iron. Nevertheless, the bridge was too narrow for twentieth-century traffic, and shifted alarmingly. In 1930, its height above the river was judged insufficient for river transportation, and it was decided to scrap it for an entirely new structure to be built a few tens of meters downstream from the former one, and with greater headroom on the river. On 1 May 1995, the Moroccan immigrant Brahim Bouarram was thrown from the bridge into the river by members of a crowd gathered by the Front National. In 2003, in the name of all the citizens of Paris, the mayor of the city, Bertrand Delanoë, honored the memory of Bouarram and all the victims of racism with a commemorative plaque on the bridge. #France #Louis_Philippe #Pount_du_carrousel #seine