Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge — transporter bridge
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Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge

Pont transbordeur de Rochefort

  • 2 min read
  • 45.916° N 0.961° W

Interesting facts

  • On 1 August 1912 the aviator Lucien Deneau flew his aircraft beneath the bridge's deck, the first recorded flight under it.
  • For its first quarter-century the gondola was driven by a steam engine; it was converted to electric power in 1927.
  • Its twin lattice pylons stand 66.25 metres tall and carry a deck 175.5 metres long, set 50 metres above the highest tides.
  • The bridge cost 586,500 francs to build, and its gondola hangs only about two metres above the river at high water.
  • Cracks found in the lower beams in 1933–1934 led to their replacement, which raised the gondola's maximum load from 14 to 16 tonnes.
  • A restoration from 2016 to 2020 replaced the solid-web deck installed in 1933 with a lattice deck like Arnodin's original, at a cost of about 22.5 million euros.
  • An earlier rehabilitation, stretching from 1980 to 1994 and costing some seven million francs, put the abandoned bridge back into service.
  • Excluding loading, the crossing itself takes about 75 seconds, the gondola moving smoothly along rails high above the Charente.

Why it is worth it

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.

It was designed by Ferdinand Arnodin, the engineer who more than anyone else made the transporter bridge a type, and built between 1898 and 1900; it was inaugurated on 29 July 1900 after twenty-seven months of work. It replaced an unreliable ferry between Rochefort and Échillais on the south bank, and at full load its gondola could take nine horse-drawn carriages and fifty people, or two hundred on foot. The crossing takes little more than a minute, the platform gliding almost silently between the reed-lined banks.

Road traffic outgrew it, and in 1967 a lift bridge opened downstream and the transporter bridge was abandoned. It came close to being scrapped, but in 1976 it was classified as a historic monument, and a long restoration followed. It is now the last working transporter bridge in France, and one of the few left anywhere, running for pedestrians and cyclists in the warmer months. The modern Martrou viaduct, opened in 1991, carries the traffic nearby, so the old bridge and its successor can be seen together.

Part of its charm is the landscape it spans, the broad, muddy tidal Charente winding through marshes towards the Atlantic, and part is its appearance on screen: it features in Jacques Demy's musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, and for many French visitors the sight of the gondola sliding over the river is inseparable from that film's colours.

Getting there

The bridge crosses the Charente about 3 km south of the centre of Rochefort, between the Martrou district and Échillais. La Rochelle Île de Ré Airport (LRH) is about 34 km away. Rochefort has a railway station on the line from La Rochelle, and the bridge can be reached from town on foot or by bike along the river.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Nouvelle-Aquitaine 16The Most Beautiful Places in France 179The Greatest Engineering Wonders in France 23The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge is a transporter bridge built between 1898 and 1900. It is located in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France and connects the towns of Rochefort and Échillais without hindering the navigation of shipping serving the ports of Rochefort and Tonnay-Charente. It is the last transporter bridge in operation in France. Crossing the river Charente, it has a maximum height of 66.5 metres (218 ft) and a total length of 175.5 metres (576 ft). It is a technical invention accomplished by the French engineer Ferdinand Arnodin. It was abandoned in 1967 in favour of a vertical lift bridge, which was in turn demolished in 1991 a few months after the opening of a new dual-carriageway road bridge, the Martrou viaduct. However, the transporter bridge was refurbished by 1994 and is now a historical monument (1976). Crossing on foot or by bicycle or moped is still possible today from April to the end of October. Crossings last 75 seconds, excluding boarding and disembarking time.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

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