Pont de Lavaur
Coordinates: 43 ° 42 ′ 5 " N , 1 ° 49 ′ 25" E
| Pont de Lavaur | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Official name | Pont Saint-Roch | |
| use | Road bridge | |
| Convicted | RD 47 | |
| Crossing of | Agout | |
| place | Lavaur (Tarn) , France | |
| construction | Stone arch bridge | |
| Number of openings | a | |
| Longest span | 48.75 m | |
| start of building | 1773 | |
| completion | 1791 | |
| planner | Joseph-Marie de Saget | |
| location | ||
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The Pont de Lavaur (officially Pont Saint-Roch ) is a bridge built between 1772 and 1785 over the deeply carved Agout River in Lavaur , Tarn , in the French region of Occitania . It is still the only road bridge that connects Lavaur with its suburbs on the right bank and enables the route to the east with the Route départementale RD 47. Only the Viaduc de Lavaur , a railway bridge built by Paul Séjourné in 1884 around 200 meters further north, otherwise crosses the river. The Pont de Lavaurhas been protected as a Monument historique since 1960 .
description
The stone arch bridge consists of a large segment arch with a span of 48.75 meters. The load-bearing stone arch, emphasized by stone carvings, is 2.92 meters thick. Its vertex is 19 meters above the river bed. The arch is bounded at the ends by two semicircular towers that reach up to the level of the street and that flank the abutments. The actual bridge is around 60 m long, including the abutment around 116 meters. The 8.86 meter wide bridge board has two lanes and narrow sidewalks that are delimited by stone walls.
history
The Pont de Lavaur was planned by Joseph-Marie de Saget (1725–1782), Director of State Construction in Languedoc . He directed the construction work from the beginning in 1773 until his death shortly after the removal of the falsework in June 1782. His younger brother took over the management of the remaining work. Two severe flood damage to the falsework, a work stop by the contractor due to problems with the compensation of the difficulties and later the renewed poor execution of other sections delayed the final completion of the bridge until 1791, i.e. until shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution . The cost, which was estimated at 260,000 livres a few years before the construction work was awarded , finally rose to 650,000 livres.
Other bridges of time
When the bridge was built, only the Pont de Vieille-Brioude, built in the 15th century, had a larger span of 54.50 meters after the Trezzo Bridge with an extraordinary span of 72 meters was deliberately destroyed during a siege in 1416. When the Pont de Vieille-Brioude collapsed on March 27, 1822, the Pont de Lavaur with its 48.75 meters had supposedly the largest span in the world for ten years, until 1832 the Grosvenor Bridge in Chester , England opened with 61 m clear width has been. However, it is overlooked that the Ponte Scaligero in Verona with 48.70 meters and the Pont Grand near Tournon-sur-Rhône with 49.20 meters also have similar spans.
Web links
- Pont Saint-Roch (1791). In: Structurae
- Paul Séjourné: Ancient Pont de Lavaur in: Construction des ponts du Castelet, de Lavaur et Antoinette . Annales des Ponts et Chaussées 1886, II. Volume XII, pp. 486-496. Digitized on BnF Gallica
- Pont sur l'Agout on Base Mérimée , accessed March 13, 2012
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pont de Lavaur, Lavaur in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)