Ponte Girevole San Francesco di Paola

Taranto's swing bridge spans the Canale Navigabile, the artificial waterway linking Mar Grande and the inland basin. Inaugurated in 1887, it connects the old island with the modern city.

Why it matters

The bridge spans an artificial arm of sea joining Mar Grande to the inland basin. The canal was cut to let vessels reach the Arsenale while preserving the island's defences. Its opening span made the bridge a defining feature of Taranto's port geography.

The bridge is also the symbol the city itself chooses. The municipal portal ranks it among the finest engineering works built in Taranto between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and quotes the line Gabriele d'Annunzio devoted to it in the fourth book of the Laudi: Gira e del ferro il tuo Canal rintrona — the iron turns and rings through the canal.

What to notice

The deck is a swing span, dividing at the middle and rotating on a vertical axis towards the banks. The 1887 bridge used turbines powered by water falling from a cistern inside a tower of the Aragonese Castle. The present structure is its mid-century successor, with an electric mechanism, inaugurated by President Giovanni Gronchi on 10 March 1958. The bridge is about 89 metres long, 10 metres wide and 12 metres high.

Context and history

The waterway came first. Around 1481 a first cut was dug to let small boats through and strengthen the castle's defence; it was crossed by a three-arched stone bridge known as the Ponte di Porta Lecce. The true navigable canal dates to the second half of the nineteenth century, excavated for the settlement of the Arsenale della Marina Militare that would define the modern city — the arsenal was inaugurated by Umberto I in 1889, two years after the bridge.

The bridge followed the canal almost immediately. Inaugurated in 1887 with a dedication to San Francesco di Paola, protector of seafarers, it was the first metal single-span structure of its kind here, designed and built by a Neapolitan firm; contemporary maritime reporting records the ceremony of Sunday 22 May 1887 and the presence of vice-admiral Ferdinando Acton, commander of the naval department, with construction entrusted to the Cottrau company under a military-engineering director. The masonry bridge it replaced was demolished for the work. In 1957-58 the whole mechanism was rebuilt on the same principle, giving the structure in service today.

The bridge retains the same basic swing-span principle in its mid-century reconstruction.