"Pont du Carrousel" - so called one of the poems of Rilke. It does not speak of the bridge, but the blind man standing on it, but without the name can not understand the tragic story. Because the blind man standing on the bridge leading to the Louvre, that is in the heart of Paris, in the center of the beauty that he sees.

Rilke wrote more of the old, not a converted Pont du Carrousel, but it does not matter - the place was virtually the same. Triomphe du Carrousel in front ferried built by royal decree of Louis-Philippe I of 1831. Construction was entrusted to the engineer Antoine Remy Polonso, a man prone to innovation and calculated risks. While the majority of the Parisian bridges were hanging, but he put the arch, and the use of a relatively new material - iron, combined with wood. Supports design decorated with large iron rings that Parisians immediately began ironically called napkin rings. At each corner of the bridge on the high pedestals placed stone allegorical sculptures in the classical style by Louis Petito - female figures representing the industry, Abundance, Paris and the Seine.

In 1883 the bridge was closed for six months to update the wooden elements. Even then, experts have recommended to replace them with iron, but did so only in 1906, using reinforced concrete. Despite the restoration, the bridge is too narrow and too low for the obsolete twentieth century. It was decided to build a new, slightly moving it.

Engineers Henry Lange and Jacques Moran, is developing a project, sought to preserve the silhouette of the old bridge, is already familiar to citizens. In addition, they abandoned the use of metal due to the close proximity of old buildings - the Louvre, the Pont Neuf and the Pont Royal. Thus, trёharochny Pont du Carrousel, leading straight to the gate of the Louvre, does not look modern. Though concrete, he is faced with stone, and at the entrance to it all the same stand on their pedestals carefully saved Industries, Abundance, Paris and the Seine.