New bridge offers a drive through the sky

A modern roadway bridge in France, hailed as the tallest in the world, is to be officially inaugurated today.

Celebrated as a work of art and an object of French national pride, the Millau bridge will enable motorists to take a drive through the sky – 891 feet above the Tarn valley for a 1.6-mile stretch through France’s Massif Central mountains.

Designed by British architect Norman Foster, the steel-and-concrete bridge with its streamlined diagonal suspension cables rests on seven pillars – the tallest measuring 1,122 feet, making it 53 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower.

The bridge, which has an airy and fluid appearance, was designed to have the “delicacy of a butterfly”, Foster said in an interview with regional daily newspaper Midi Libre.

“A work of man must fuse with nature. The pillars had to look almost organic, like they had grown from the earth,” said Foster, who also designed London’s Millennium Bridge.

Colorado’s Royal Gorge Bridge, towering 1,053 feet above the Arkansas River, is the world’s tallest suspension bridge – but it is designed for pedestrians. The Kochertal viaduct in Germany was the highest roadway, at 607 feet, officials said.

French President Jacques Chirac was to inaugurate the bridge today in Millau, a town best-known outside France as the place where anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove dismantled a McDonald’s restaurant.

The bridge, nearly three years in construction, opens to vehicles on Thursday.

The €392m bridge was commissioned to open a new north-south link between Paris and the Mediterranean and is expected to relieve bottlenecks caused by trucks and tourists headed to the Riviera.

Images of the bridge, which dominates the surrounding Rhone Valley countryside for miles, have appeared in national media for days. Aerial photos published in Le Monde show the bridge rising above the clouds, and the newspaper’s editorial declares it “a work of art”.

Some 28,000 vehicles a day are expected to cross the bridge in the summer months, and about 10,000 a day the rest of the year, according to France’s Eiffage construction company, which built it.