Alcántara Bridge

The Roman bridge at Alcántara strides across the gorge of the Tagus on six stone arches, its deck some 45 metres above the riverbed — high enough that, standing on the bank below, you feel the scale of Roman engineering the way few other monuments allow. It was built in 104–106 AD for the emperor Trajan, himself born in Hispania, and it is so bound up with the place that the town took its name from it: al-Qanṭara, Arabic for "the arch", became Alcántara. Nearly two thousand years later it is still standing and in use.

The design is simple and monumental. The two central arches, the widest spanning almost 29 metres, rise from piers founded in the river; smaller arches step down towards the banks, and the whole structure runs about 182 metres from end to end. Over the central pier stands a triumphal arch some 14 metres high, dedicated to Trajan, with an inscription listing the Lusitanian towns that contributed to the cost. At one end a small temple of the same stone, with two columns on its front and a gabled roof, preserves the name of the engineer: Caius Julius Lacer, whose inscription declares that he made a bridge meant to last for ever through the ages of the world. He is honoured there with a tomb, a rare case of a Roman engineer whose name has come down with his work.

That boast has largely come true, though not without help. The bridge has been broken and mended many times, almost always by war: in 1214 the Moors destroyed the smallest arch, rebuilt in 1543; in 1760 a northwestern arch was cut and repaired two years later under Charles III; in 1809 British forces under Wellington damaged it to halt the French; and in 1836, during the Carlist war, it suffered heavy destruction, repaired in 1860. In the twentieth century the great Alcántara dam was built only about 600 metres upstream, and when the Tagus was diverted for its construction in 1969 the main piers were thoroughly repaired. The bridge has been a protected monument since 1921.

Getting there

The bridge lies about 400 metres north of the town of Alcántara in western Extremadura, near the Portuguese border; Cáceres, the provincial capital, is about 52 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Badajoz Airport (BJZ), about 93 km away. The bridge can be seen both from its deck and from the banks of the Tagus below.