07/07/2023 | Partner: Regione Valle d'Aosta
The Saint-Vincent Bridge
The echo of events joins the two river banks in a timeless tale…
Dating back to the 1st century BC, it is a sentinel of the passing time, hovering between the memory of a glorious past and the echo of ancient bridge failures.
Context
East of the village of Saint-Vincent, what remains of the bridge emerges between the vegetation and the rocks, steeply descending into the narrow gorge of the Cillian stream.
The surrounding area is rich in evidence related to the passage and presence of man from prehistory to the present day, with rock carvings, burials, historic buildings, and agricultural terraces.
History
At dawn on June 8, 1839, a great noise testifies to the partial failure of the bridge. The collapse of the rock spike on which the left abutment rested drags with it the central arch and a piece of history of the Roman Via delle Gallie. Following another failure in 1907, only the eastern abutment survived, still connected to a section of the Roman road.
Built by the Romans in the 1st century BC to overcome the obstacle of the Cillian stream, it was constantly exploited over the following centuries. It was subject to maintenance such as that of 1779, when the municipality of Saint-Vincent budgeted an amount of money useful for the supply of stones, lime, and sand that the population used in the renovation work of the vault and the parapet.
During the 19th century, foreign travelers passing by portrayed it in all its grandeur. Thanks to these images and the documentation drafted by the architect Carlo Promis shortly before the bridge failure, we know its original appearance and we can still imagine retracing safely this Roman road through the narrow gorge.
Architecture
The Via delle Gallie reached the stream following the natural morphology of the slope. The road surface was supported by a foundation wall connected to a blind arcade, useful for unloading the excessive weight of the bridge abutment just ahead, thus counteracting the thrust of the central arch.
The two buttresses placed on the sides of the relieving arch, made with a series of squared ashlars in “travertine” (a local limestone tuff), reinforce this point of cohesion between the road and the bridge.
Along the foundation wall as on the bridge arch, the use of the opus vittatum is observed: an alternation of rows of travertine slabs and rubble masonry filled with stone chips bound with tenacious mortar. A similar construction technique is recognized on the bridge of Pont-Saint-Martin and on what remains of the Roman bridge of Châtillon.
