Bridges That Bridge Civilizations(Contd.)

Ponte Sant’Angelo 
Ponte Sant’Angelo is one among the most famous Roman bridges adorning the landscapes that dotted the once mighty Roman Empire. The bridge was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to span the Tiber River to connect the two banks. Called Pons Arlius meaning the Bridge of Hadrian. It got completed in 134-135 CE.
Hadrian
A brief account of Hadrian, the emperor who lends his name to this magnificent structure merits mention. Though history commemorated Hadrian for constructing the Hadrian Walls to protect the Roman Britain from the barbarians to its north, he is known to have energetically pursued his own imperial ambitions. He was an untiring campaigner, constantly on move with an imperial retinue of specialists and administrators. Hadrian ruled Rome from 117 to 138 AD.
River Tiber
But for the picturesque and graceful river Tiber, the bridge could not have existed. Tiber or Fiume Tevere in Italian, was known as Albula earlier because of the whiteness of its waters, it was renamed Tiberis after Tiberinus, a king of Alba Longa  (an area centred on Lago Albano, south of Rome) who was drowned in it.
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 km through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the River Aniene, to the Tyrrhenian Sea, between Ostia and Fiumicino.
It has nurtured trade and commerce through ships navigating through it. Like many other famous river that helped civilizations flourish on their banks, Tiber too provided the life line to the towns located on its bank with drinking water and for irrigation.
An Arch Bridge
It is an arch bridge, an architectural concept extensively used and popularised in opulent Roman public structures. It consists of seven stone arches and five main spans of about 18 metres (60 feet) each, supported on piers 7 metres (24 feet) high.
Arches were used in ancient Egypt and Greece but were considered unsuitable for monumental architecture and seldom used. The Romans, by contrast, used the semi-circular arch in bridges, aqueducts, and large-scale architecture. In most cases they did not use mortar, relying simply on the precision of their stone dressing in masonry construction. Arches have several great advantages over horizontal beams called lintels.
But apart from structural advantages, it was the aesthetic dimension that made the use of arches a preferred feature of Roman public buildings and monuments. The Arabs later made it into a more evolved pointed arch, to be further refined into segmental arch in middle ages.
The use of arches remains as fashionable and as integral to modern architecture except that stones have been replaced by concrete, steel and laminated wood that offer superior strength and drastically reduced weight.
photo source: Wikimedia Commons
The Bridge and Bernani
Since the year 135 CE, the bridge stood beautifully but somewhat plainly for 1200 years till in the 13th century Pope Clement IV installed an iron balustrade on the bridge. Three centuries later another Pope, Clement VII placed statues of Saints Peter and Paul at the ends of the bridge.
But the bridge that is a visual feast to eyes, found its impeccably captivating and outstanding expression in early 17th Century. The bridge of today joins the two magnificent monuments, Campus Martius (City Canter) and the Mausoleum of Hadrian, now called Castela Sant’ Angelo. It’s very majestic and exquisite architecture owes its existence to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), the famous Italian baroque sculptor and architect. It carries the essential imprint of his opulent and rich style. “What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture”, goes the evaluation of this inordinately powerful and gifted master. The leading sculptor of his age, he was not only a sculptor but a painter and a man of theatre as well. Remembered for designing and executing a number of secular buildings, churches, chapels, public squares and bridges, his talents burnished by compositional inventiveness and perfected by technical versatility, cast an immortality on the grandeur of buildings that he created. Pont Sant Angelo is no exception. As Irving Lavin, the Art Historian observes, this monument celebrated the exquisite ‘synthesis and unity of visual arts’.
He was commissioned to sculpt 10 statues of angels. Eight years after his death, in 1688, these statues were mounted on the parapets of the bridge, making it the bridge’s most distinctive feature and establishing Ponte Sant’Angelo as one of the most aesthetically adorned and embellished bridges in the world.
Used only by pedestrians, the bridge offers an unmatched view of the languidly scenic Tiber and elegantly grand Castel Sant’Angelo.