Pont Jacques Chaban Delmas

This guide to the Pont Jacques Chaban Delmas in Bordeaux opens with the moment traffic on the deck simply stops, roughly sixty times a year, as two thousand five hundred tonnes of steel and concrete rise into the sky over the Garonne. It follows how the lift actually works, the cables, pulleys and counterweights hidden inside the four tall pylons, and why no tall-masted ship could reach the old Port de la Lune before this bridge opened in twenty thirteen. Watch the pylons at night, too, since their color changes with the tide.