Vendettas, nuraghi and the marches: A bridge of beauty

We came to Millau especially to see its amazing bridge. We had seen its construction on Megastructures and lived through the joys and woes of the build with its designers and engineers, step by step. We watched seven concrete pylons, that looked like giant Lilliputian chopsticks, built onsite, being driven into bedrock in a valley between two mountains aided by a stack of temporary pylons which looked as though they needed to have been made permanent. Too high. Too high, we thought.

We watched the deck surface, also built onsite, being slid out onto these pylons and rammed together out over the valley, centimeter by centimeter. Hanging there. They will fall. They will fall through space, we thought.

We watched the wind rip through the valley causing the bridge to sway back and forth, like a toy suspension bridge, at such an angle that cars and trucks driving over it at the time would have been tossed like Tonka toys into the depths below. We waited in awe for the designers and engineers to solve the problem and stabilize the deck surface with cables. Strung like thin white steel string from tall masts that were added to the bridge top that weighed down the seven fragile chopstick pylons. Too thin, we thought. Much too thin.

And we watched as they tentatively removed all the temporary pylons leaving the seven graceful chopsticks to support all that weight themselves. Too fragile, we thought. It will surely fail.

We were in Shanghai for the opening of the Nanpu Bridge over the Huangpu River. We were among the first to walk across it on Opening Day. We were amazed by it. It broke the record for so many 'firsts' in 1991. It had the most amazing spiral approach access we had ever seen, but on the day it was opened, it proved too steep for the existing buses to use, so special buses had to be bought just to run the access loop and the length of the bridge. All other buses stopped at the Interchange built at the bottom. Such are the pitfalls of bridge design. Even so, Nanpu was beautiful. Simple, elegant, strong: even sensational.

I think Millau is even more so. It is so delicate spanning that space between two mountains. It looks too fragile to hold a bantamweight bicycle. But thanks to an English architect, Norman Foster, a French Engineer, Michel Virlogeux, and their teams, Millau is quite possibly one of the most beautiful, and strongest bridges, on the planet. And if ever someone is ever tempted to select Seven Bridges of the Modern World Millau Viaduct surely would rank up there with them.

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