8 Most Beautiful Bridges in the

World

The Tower Bridge stood over the River Thames in London and is
one of the world’s most recognizable bridges in the world. One
of the most famous examples of the bascule type is the Tower
Bridge, which spans the River Thames just below London Bridge.
It is the most distinctive of London’s bridges and its construction
was a masterly engineering achievement. Engineers were able
to build this type of bridge without interrupting traffic on the
great commercial waterway.
Westminster Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge over the
River Thames between Westminger and Lambeth. This bridge
was esteemed one of the most complete and elegant structures
of the kind in the world. It is built entirely of stone, and extends
over the river at a place where it is 1,223 feet broad, which is
above 300 feet broader than at London Bridge. On each side is a
fine balustrade of stone, with places of shelter from the rain.
The width of the bridge is 44 feet, having on each side a fine
Footway for passengers. It consisting of fourteen piers, and
thirteen large and two small arches, all semicircular, that in the
centre being 76 feet wide, and the rest decreasing four feet
each from the other; so that the two last arches of the thirteen
great ones are each 52 feet. It is computed that 40,000l. Value
in stone and other materials is always under water.
The Bosphorus or Bosporus, also known as the Istanbul Strait, is
a strait that forms part of the boundary between the European
part of Turkey and its Asian part. It is one of the Turkish Straits,
along with the Dardanelles. The world’s narrowest strait used
for international navigation, it connects the Black Sea with the
Sea of Marmara (which is connected by the Dardanelles to the
Aegean Sea, and thereby to the Mediterranean Sea). It is
approximately 30 km (19 mi) long, with a maximum width of
3,700 m (12,139 ft) at the northern entrance, and a minimum
width of 700 m (2,297 ft) between Kandilli and A?iyan; and
750 m (2,461 ft) between Anadoluhisar? and Rumelihisar?. The
depth varies from 36 to 124 m (118 to 407 ft) in midstream. The
shores of the strait are heavily populated as the city of Istanbul
(with a metropolitan area in excess of 11 million inhabitants)
straddles it.

The first, the Bosphorus Bridge, is 1,074 m (3,524 ft) long and
was completed in 1973. The second, Fatih Sultan Mehmet
(Bosphorus II) Bridge, is 1,090 m (3,576 ft) long, and was
completed in 1988 about 5 km (3 mi) north of the first bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in

the United States. At the time it opened, it was the longest
suspension bridge in the world, stretching 5,989 feet (1825 m)
over the East River, connecting the New York City boroughs of
Manhattan and Brooklyn. Upon completion in 1883, it was the
longest suspension bridge in the world, the first steel-wire
suspension bridge, and the first bridge to connect to Manhattan.

Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, it

was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge in an 1867 letter to the editor
of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and formally so named by the city
government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an iconic
part of the New York skyline. It was designated a National
Historic Landmark in 1964.

The San-Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is a toll bridge which spans the

San Francisco Bay and links the Californian cities of Oakland and San
Francisco in the United States.

The toll bridge was conceived as early as the gold rush days, but
construction did not begin until 1933. Designed by Charles H. Purcell, and
built by American Bridge Company, it opened for traffic on November 12,
1936, six months before the Golden Gate Bridge. It originally carried
automobile traffic on its upper deck, and trucks and trains on the lower,
but after the closure of the Key System, the lower deck was converted to
road traffic as well.
The Tsing Ma Bridge is a bridge in Hong Kong. It is the world’s
seventh-longest span suspension bridge. The bridge was named
after two of the islands at its ends, namely Tsing Yi
and Ma Wan . It has two decks and carries both roadrail traffic,
which also makes it the largest suspension bridge of this type.
The bridge has a main span of 1,377 metres (4,518 ft) and a
height of 206 metres (676 ft). The span is the largest of all
bridges in the world carrying rail traffic.

The 41 metres (135 ft) wide bridge deck carries six lanes of
automobile traffic, with three lanes in each direction. The lower
level contains two rail tracks. There are also two sheltered
carriageways on the lower deck for maintenance access and as
backup for traffic when particularly severe typhoons strike Hong
Kong. Though road traffic would need to be closed in that case,
trains could still get through in either direction.
Richmond Bridge is a Grade I listed 18th-century stone arch
bridge in south west London, England, which crosses the River
Thames at Richmond, connecting the two halves of the present-
day London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Because the
river meanders from its general west to east direction, flowing
from southeast to northwest in this part of London, what would
otherwise be known as the north and south banks are often
referred to as the “Middlesex” (Twickenham) and “Surrey”
(Richmond) banks respectively, named after the historic
counties to which each side once belonged.

The bridge was built between 1774 and 1777 to the designs of
James Paine and Kenton Couse, as a replacement for a ferry
crossing which connected Richmond town centre on the east
bank with its neighbouring district of East Twickenham (St.
Margarets) to the west. Its construction was privately funded by
a tontine scheme, for which tolls were charged until 1859. The
bridge was widened and slightly flattened in 1937–40, but
otherwise still conforms to its original design. The eighth
Thames bridge to be built in what is now Greater London, it is
today the oldest surviving Thames bridge in London.

The Nanpu Bridge, located at the South Dock – the narrowest

part of the lower reaches of the Huangpu River, was constructed
in 1991. The main arch of the bridge has a span of 423 meters
and a height of 46 meters. The total length of the bridge is 846
meters, and the bridge tower is 150 meters tall. Nanpu Bridge is
the first bridge on the Huangpu River. Tourists can take the
elevator to get to the sidewalk of the bridge and overlook the
scenery on both banks of the Huangpu River.