Three soldiers pose on the cobbled embankment before the wrecked road bridge, a small dog at one man's feet. The fallen ironwork carries a cast eagle crest, the name Kraljevica Tomislava, and a roundel dated 1928, the year the bridge's namesake, Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia, was born. Across the river rises the hill town of Petrovaradin, its church tower visible above rows of white buildings. Yugoslav forces destroyed the bridge in April 1941 as German-led forces invaded.
About this place
The Prince Tomislav bridge was the first permanent road bridge over the Danube between Novi Sad and Petrovaradin. It was built between 1921 and 1928, and it opened a boulevard along which Novi Sad grew down to the river and tied the city to Petrovaradin on the far bank. The Water Gate of the Petrovaradin lower town and the Danube fortifications were pulled down in the early 1920s to clear the ground for it. Yugoslav forces mined the bridge in 1941, the German occupiers rebuilt it, and it was destroyed again during their retreat in 1944; the replacement raised on the same crossing after the war was named for Marshal Tito. In photographs it is told apart from the town’s other crossings by the spiked finials along its truss, a silhouette that recalls the bridges of Budapest.
- Date
- 1941
- Coordinates
- 45.25463, 19.85729
- Source
- Fortepan
- Credit
- Fortepan / Martin Djemil
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Size
- 3838 × 2821 px
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