Ponte della Maddalena
Interesting facts
- According to legend, the builder promised the Devil the first soul to cross the finished bridge, and the townspeople cheated him by sending a dog over first.
- Local folklore adds that the ghost of that dog, a white Maremma sheepdog in some tellings, appears near the bridge on October evenings.
- A second legend tells of Lucida Mansi, a Lucca noblewoman said to have traded her soul for thirty years of youth and lost it at the top of the bridge.
- The great central arch rises about 18 metres above the Serchio, and the whole bridge has five unequal arches arranged asymmetrically.
- In the early twentieth century a new arch was opened at one end so the Lucca–Aulla railway could pass through, changing the bridge's original profile.
- Some accounts place Castruccio Castracani's reconstruction more precisely in the 1320s, when he ruled Lucca as lord and later duke.
- The bridge came through the Second World War intact, although many crossings in the region were demolished during the German retreat.
- A restoration completed in 2020, funded partly through Italy's Art Bonus scheme and private donors, cleaned and waterproofed the old stonework.
Why it is worth it
A single enormous arch springs from one bank of the Serchio and lands on the other, so steep and lopsided that the roadway climbs almost like a staircase to its crown: the Ponte della Maddalena, better known as the Devil's Bridge, is one of the boldest pieces of medieval engineering in Tuscany. Its main span measures about 37.8 metres, while the smaller arches beside it look almost incidental next to the great curve reflected in the river.
The crossing is traditionally credited to Matilda of Tuscany, the powerful countess who is believed to have commissioned it around 1080–1100. Some two centuries later, around 1300, it was reworked under Castruccio Castracani, the lord of Lucca. The bridge carried one of the key river crossings of the Via Francigena, the pilgrim road from France to Rome, which explains why so much effort was spent on spanning the Serchio at this point. Its present name dates from around 1500 and refers to an oratory of Mary Magdalene, whose statue once stood at the eastern end. The structure was valued enough that in 1670 the General Council of Lucca forbade carrying millstones and sacks of flour across it, to protect it from heavy loads, and it needed repair after floods in 1836.
Like many medieval bridges across Europe, it carries the name Ponte del Diavolo. Local tradition holds that so improbable an arch could only have been raised with the Devil's help, and the story has clung to the bridge for centuries. The bridge also appears in a fourteenth-century novella by Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca, a sign of how early it captured the imagination.
The bridge stands at Borgo a Mozzano, a small town in the middle Serchio valley between the Garfagnana and the plain of Lucca. First recorded in 879, the settlement passed from local families to Lucca and later to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
Getting there
The bridge is at Borgo a Mozzano in the province of Lucca, roughly 16 km in a straight line from the town of Capannori and a short drive up the valley from Lucca. Borgo a Mozzano is served by stations on the Lucca–Aulla railway, and the SS12 road follows the valley. The nearest airport is Pisa International (PSA), about 36 km away in a straight line.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Piazza dell'Anfiteatro 16.0 km · square
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From the encyclopaedia
Ponte della Maddalena is a deck arch bridge crossing the Serchio river near the town of Borgo a Mozzano in the Italian province of Lucca. It's one of numerous medieval bridges known as Ponte del Diavolo, the "Bridge of the Devil", it was a vital river crossing on the Via Francigena, an early medieval road to Rome for those coming from France that was an important medieval pilgrimage route.
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