Pont d'Iéna: Napoleon's Victory Bridge
Why is it significant?
Step onto the bridge and stop halfway across. In front of you the tower rises so close that you have to tip your head right back. Behind you the palace spreads its arms. And beneath you the Seine slides past with tour boats turning in their own wake.
Key Facts
| Place | Pont d'Iéna: Napoleon's Victory Bridge |
|---|---|
| Address | Pont d'Iéna, 75016 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85980, 2.29200 |
| Part of Walk | Iron, Glory and Gold: The Eiffel Tower, Trocadéro & Les Invalides in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Step onto the bridge and stop halfway across. In front of you the tower rises so close that you have to tip your head right back. Behind you the palace spreads its arms. And beneath you the Seine slides past with tour boats turning in their own wake.
This is the Pont d'Iéna, begun under Napoleon in 1808 and named after the Battle of Jena, where in 1806 he crushed the Prussian army. Naming a bridge in the heart of Paris after a defeat of Prussia seemed a fine idea at the time. Look along the sides and you will see carved imperial eagles on the piers, Napoleon's symbol, still keeping watch over the river.
Then the wheel turned. In 1814 and again in 1815, after Napoleon's fall, Prussian troops occupied Paris, and their commander, Marshal Blücher, had not forgotten Jena. He wanted the bridge blown up, and the story goes that his engineers actually began to lay charges. The restored king, Louis XVIII, is said to have declared that he would have himself carried onto the bridge and sit there, so that if it went up, he would go with it. Whether he really said it or not, the bridge survived, and for a while it was diplomatically renamed after the military school instead.
At each corner stands a stone horseman, added in the 1850s under Napoleon the Third: a Gaul, a Roman, a Greek and an Arab warrior, each holding a rearing horse. And in 1937, for the exhibition you just heard about, the bridge was widened so that the crowds could flow from one bank to the other. It still carries more pedestrians than almost any bridge in the city, most of them walking backwards, phones raised.
Notice too how perfectly everything lines up. The palace, the bridge, the tower, the long lawn and the military school beyond it all sit on a single axis, as if one architect had planned it in a day. In fact it took more than a hundred and fifty years. Cross to the other bank and walk in beneath the tower itself.