The Most Remarkable Transporter Bridges in the World
2 places in 2 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable transporter bridges in the world are Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge (France) and Vizcaya Bridge (Spain). The list covers 2 transporter bridges in 2 countries. France has the most, with 1. Last updated 6 October 2026.
01 Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge
Pont transbordeur de Rochefort
France · 31.5 km from La Rochelle45.916° N 0.961° W
This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder . Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author and send me a message . This image is not in the public domain . Please respect the copyright protection. It may only be used according to the rules mentioned here. This specifically excludes use in social media , if applicable terms of the licenses listed here not appropriate. Please do not upload an updated image here without consultation with the Author. The author would like to make corrections only at his own source. This ensures that the changes are preserved. Please if you think that any changes should be required, please inform the author. Otherwise you can upload a new image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract . · CC BY-SA 3.0 The transporter bridge at Rochefort is one of the strangest and most elegant machines ever built to cross a river. Instead of carrying a road over the Charente, it hangs a moving platform, a gondola, from a carriage that runs along a high steel deck, and ferries passengers from bank to bank a few metres above the water. The deck spans almost 140 metres between two latticed pylons, and the whole structure rises to about 66 metres, tall enough to let the masts of sailing ships pass underneath.
Did you know? On 1 August 1912 the aviator Lucien Deneau flew his aircraft beneath the bridge's deck, the first recorded flight under it.
02 Vizcaya Bridge
Puente Vizcaya
Spain · 10.8 km from Bilbao43.323° N 3.017° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by simmering_prop from Pixabay The Vizcaya Bridge isn't just old — it's the prototype for a whole vanished category of engineering. Alberto de Palacio, who had trained under Gustave Eiffel, faced a problem that a normal bridge couldn't solve: the Nervión River below was one of the busiest industrial waterways in Spain, thick with tall-masted cargo ships, and any fixed low bridge would have blocked them, while a bridge tall enough to clear the masts would have needed absurdly long, expensive ramps on both banks. His answer, patented and built between 1887 and 1893, was to hang a gondola from a steel carriage that runs along rails 45 metres up, ferrying people, carts and later cars across in about ninety seconds without ever touching the water or the ships beneath it.
Did you know? The gondola still runs around the clock every day of the year, leaving roughly every eight minutes in daytime and once an hour at night.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most remarkable transporter bridges in the world?
- On our list, Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge (France) ranks first, followed by Vizcaya Bridge (Spain).
- Which country has the most transporter bridges in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from France (1) and Spain (1).
- How many transporter bridges are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 2 transporter bridges in 2 countries. France has the most, with 1.