The paddle steamer Starcevic passes Petrovaradin through the opened pontoon bridge, one span swung aside on its floats to let her through. A medallion of the whiskered emperor is printed over a loyal salute in Serbian that hails him as king, the title he carried on the Hungarian side of the monarchy, and the caption itself runs in German, Hungarian and Serbian, which places the card before 1918.
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
- 1910
- Coordinates
- 45.25463, 19.85729
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain (historical photograph)
- Size
- 1600 × 1038 px
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