Radweg Via Raetica

The Stone Bridge (Steinerne Brücke) in Regensburg , Germany, is a 12th-century bridge across the Danube  linking the Old Town with Stadtamhof. For more than 800 years, until the 1930s, it was the city's only bridge across the river. It is a masterwork of medieval construction and an emblem of the city.

Charlemagne had a wooden bridge built at Regensburg, approximately 100 metres (330 ft) east of the present bridge, but it was inadequate for the traffic and vulnerable to floods, so it was decided to replace it with a stone bridge.

The Stone Bridge was built in only eleven years, probably in 1135–46. Louis VII of France and his army used it to cross the Danube on their way to the Second Crusade. It served as a model for other stone bridges built in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries: the Elbe bridge in Dresden, London Bridge across the Thames, the Pont d'Avignon across the Rhône and the Judith Bridge (predecessor of the Charles Bridge) across the Vltava in Prague. It remained the only bridge across the Danube at Regensburg for about 800 years, until the construction of the Nibelungen Bridge . For centuries it was the only bridge over the river between Ulm  and Vienna , making Regensburg into a major centre of trade and government.

The bridge originally had its own administration, using a seal depicting it, the oldest example of which dates to 1307; tolls were used for its upkeep.

Construction and modifications

The Stone Bridge is an arch bridge with 16 arches. At the south end, the first arch and first pier were incorporated into the Regensburg Salt Store when it was built in 1616–20, but remain in place under the approach road to the bridge. An archaeological investigation was performed in 2009, and revealed fire damage during the Middle Ages. The bridge was originally 336 metres (1,102 ft) long; the building in of the first pier reduced it to 308.7 metres (1,013 ft). The southern, Old Town end of the bridge is half a metre lower than the northern, Stadtamhof end, and the bridge bends slightly because of the course of the river at that point.

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