Pont Royal

Pont Royal
Pont Royal
	Pont Royal
Coordinates	48°51′36.35″N 02°19′47.56″E / 48.8600972°N 2.3298778°E
Carries	Motor vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles
Crosses	The Seine River
Locale	Paris, France
Next upstream	Pont du Carrousel
Next downstream	Passerelle Léopold; -Sédar-Senghor
Characteristics
Design	Arch Bridge
Total length	110 m
Width	17 m
History
Construction start	1685
Construction end	1689
Statistics
Toll	Free both ways
Location

The Pont Royal is a bridge crossing the river Seine in Paris. It is the third oldest bridge in Paris, after the Pont Neuf and the Pont Marie.

Location

The Pont Royal links the

rue du Bac and the rue de Beaune

. The bridge is constructed with five elliptical arches en plein cintre. A hydrographic ladder, indicating floods' highest level in Paris, is visible on the last pier nearest each bank.

Access

___	Located near the Tuileries .

History

In 1632, the entrepreneur

Madame de Sévigné

reported that this last incident caused the loss of eight of the bridge's arches.

The bridge was finally reconstructed between 25 October 1685 and 13 June 1689, this time with stone, receiving complete financing from King Louis XIV. It was the king who gave it the name Pont Royal. Louvois, director of the Bâtiments du Roi, charged Jacques Gabriel, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and François Romain with the construction project. In the 18th century, the bridge was a popular meeting place for various festivities and celebrations.

At the time of the

Tuileries

Palace.

During the First French Empire (1804-1814), Napoléon I renamed the bridge the Pont des Tuileries, a name that was kept until the Restoration in 1814 when Louis XVIII gave back to the bridge its royal name.

The bridge underwent a last reconstruction in 1850. In 1939, it was classified as a monument historique.^[2]

In 2005, the Pont Royal was illuminated by lights at night as one of the

Paris Olympic Bid

highlights.