Index – National – Rio biseca

There are few structures in history that have had unaltered content as a symbol and physical object for millennia. Perhaps it is just the temple, always fighting for the sky, which, like the bridge, naturally symbolizes the creative power, creation and progress of man.

It is no coincidence that the cities on the rivers grew almost immediately next to the bridges built in place of the old crossings and waders. The different development paths between the construction of the Károly Bridge in Prague and the Széchenyi Chain Bridge in Budapest are well illustrated.

Building a bridge has always been an extremely expensive hobby, so despite the modernization of the country, relatively few new bridges have been built in socialist Hungary. However, we can be proud of most of them, including the Elizabeth Bridge designed by Pál Sávoly.

• One of the first signs of development that began after the regime change was the bridges on the M0 ring road, diverting traffic west-south out of Budapest, followed in 1992 by the Tisza bridge on main road 4 in Szolnok.
• Two years later, another bridge was built on the Tisza, Cigánd, with the creative reuse of elements of the bridge that became redundant during the renovation of the civil bridge of Tisza.
• The Tisza was again followed by the Danube. By 1995, the bridge connecting the southern parts of Pest and Buda was completed, right next to the Southern Connecting Railway Bridge, first called Lágymányosi and since 2011 Rákóczi.
• After five years to no avail, almost a year has passed since 2000 without the delivery of one or more large span bridges.
• The newly built ones include well-known works of art, such as the roundabout on the common section of the M1-M7,
• the Kőröshegy Valley Bridge, which was widely criticized for its high price, and II. Mária Valéria bridge connecting Esztergom and Štúrovo, blown up in the Second World War.

Of course, Hungary would not have been what it would have been if we had not encountered such funny or tragicomic stories as the Pentele Bridge in Dunaújváros, also known as the M8, which literally crosses into nowhere, since the M8 motorway to or from there is not has built ever since. . A similar case today is the incomprehensibly lengthy renovation of the M0 Ferenc Deák bridge, which has not been completed in more than two and a half years.

Cover image: MTI Photographer: Varga György