Standing beside the Seine, the Pont de Bir-Hakeim looks like a magnificent piece of Parisian industrial art: a double-decker bridge of steel and iron, its lower roadway and pedestrian walkway beneath the elevated tracks of Metro Line 6.
Its story, however, is much more than architecture.
Built in the early 1900s and originally known as the Pont de Passy, the bridge was renamed in 1948 after the Battle of Bir Hakeim in Libya, where Free French forces under General Marie-Pierre Koenig held out against overwhelming German and Italian forces.
The bridge also became one of Paris’s most cinematic locations, appearing in Inception.
This episode of The Glow of Paris explores the bridge’s engineering, sculpture, wartime history and enduring place in the visual identity of Paris.
The Glow of Paris – Pont d’Arcole