An engraving rather than a photograph, and with no printed caption on the plate. The pontoon bridge is laid unbroken across the Danube on its line of oak floats and there is no permanent crossing anywhere in the view, which places the sheet before the railway bridge of 1883; barges lie moored above it and the town on the far bank is low, with three or four church towers for landmarks. The figures watching from the bank wear long fur-trimmed coats, a broad-brimmed hat and a countryman's smock.
About this place
Before any permanent bridge stood here, Novi Sad and Petrovaradin were joined by a wooden pontoon bridge laid across the Danube on oak floats. Crossings of this kind were used from the late seventeenth century, and the first standing bridge dates from 1788; it was known as Hagen's bridge after the officer, Baron von Hagen, who designed it on the model of one at Mannheim. It was laid each spring by the pontonier unit stationed at Petrovaradin and taken up again before the first ice, and its middle section could be drawn aside to let river traffic through. Carts paid a toll while anything carried by hand went free, residents of the two towns crossed without charge, and the season opened every year with a handshake between the mayor of Novi Sad and the commandant of the fortress. The bridge was removed for the last time in 1918, when work began on the permanent crossing that became the Prince Tomislav bridge.
- Date
- before 1883
- Coordinates
- 45.25463, 19.85729
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 878 × 533 px
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