The Barrandov Bridge celebrates its 25th anniversary

photo: vetrelciavolavky.cz

Prague - The Barrandov Bridge, which connects the so-called Southern Connection with K Barrandovu Street, has been one of the busiest roads in Prague for a quarter of a century. The fourth Prague bridge crossing the Vltava from the south, which is the largest bridge structure in Prague, was under construction since May 1978, with the southern half opening on September 20, 1983, and the official opening of the entire bridge taking place 25 years ago, on November 3, 1988. Until 1990, it was called the Antonín Zápotocký Bridge.
    Interestingly, this bridge is one of the two skew bridges over the Vltava in the metropolis. The angle of intersection of this road bridge with the Vltava river is 53 degrees, while the Holešovice railway bridge, often also referred to as the Railway Bridge under Bulovka, crosses the river at an angle of 45 degrees.
    Efforts to bridge the area where the Barrandov Bridge now stands date back at least 200 years. Between Modřany and Chuchle, there was a boat bridge in 1756 during the siege of Prague by King Frederick II of Prussia. The idea of building a bridge was also alive during the First Republic, and at the very beginning of World War II, there were 21 proposals concerning bridging at these locations.
    The current bridge has eight lanes, is 352 meters long, and 40 meters wide. The span of the longest section measures 72 meters, the deck is 15 meters above the surface of the Vltava, and the depth of the foundations in the Vltava riverbed reached up to 20 meters. The structure consists of a continuous beam with six sections of varying height and width.
    Preparation work on the bridge began back in May 1978, with the actual construction of the bridge taking more than four years until the southern half was operational. The cost of building the Barrandov Bridge amounted to 483 million CZK.
    From an architectural point of view, exposed concrete was successfully used here. Enormous concrete sculptures by sculptor Josef Klimeš are located on the abutments: on the right bank, it is "Balance," nicknamed "the conqueror worm," and on the left bank, two concrete bowls called "hippo bath" or "elephant feeder."
    For centuries, there was only one bridge over the Vltava in Prague - the Charles Bridge. The next bridging occurred in 1841 when the predecessor of the current Legion Bridge was opened. Nine years later, the railway Negrelli Viaduct was put into operation, in May 1868 the predecessor of the current Štefánik Bridge, the bridge of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and in November 1869 the predecessor of the current Mánes Bridge.
    Currently, there are 19 bridges over the Vltava in Prague, including 12 road bridges, four railway bridges, two pedestrian bridges, and one tram bridge. The most recent, the nineteenth Prague bridge over the Vltava, the Lochkov Bridge on the Prague Ring R1, was opened on September 20, 2010. Prior to that, the last bridge over the Vltava was the Troja footbridge, which had been in operation since July 1984.
    At the beginning of October, however, operations on the Troja tram bridge from 1977, nicknamed "the noisy one," were suspended. The new adjacent Troja Bridge is set to begin operations at the end of April next year, accommodating cars, trams, pedestrians, and cyclists, measuring over 260 meters in length (the "noisy one" measured 250 meters). The new Troja Bridge will connect to the Blanka tunnel complex in Holešovice, and the construction costs, initially estimated at around half a billion crowns, will eventually rise to about 1.2 billion crowns.