Historic Bridges Built Before 1700 That Still Stand

A photo gallery of the world's oldest surviving bridges, from a Bronze Age crossing in Greece to a wooden arch bridge in Edo-period Japan, shown roughly in the order work began on them. To earn a place, a bridge had to be designed before 1700 and still stand in that form today. Most are still crossed every day, and a few, like Avignon's broken bridge, survive only in part. Many of these bridges have been repaired, widened or rebuilt after floods, fires and wars, and each caption says so where the bridge you see is a faithful reconstruction rather than the original stones or timbers. Aqueducts are left out, and so are later bridges that only kept an old name, which is why Heidelberg's Old Bridge, rebuilt in stone in the 1780s, is missing.