Ponte Santa Trinita
Florence Italy
2016

The bridge take its name after the church of the Holy Trinity. The first wooden bridge, whose construction was funded by the nobleman Lamberto Frescobaldi, dates to 1252.
After collapsing in 1259, it was replaced by a stone bridge, which was then swept away by the flood of 1333.
Reconstruction lasted from 1346 to 1415, but another flood destroyed the bridge in 1557. Cosimo I commissioned the Italian architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati to undertake the construction of the new bridge. Planning took 10 years, and it seems that Michelangelo was involved in its design.
The structural innovation that anticipates the fashion of the baroque style is its characteristic line of the three elliptical arches.
The bridge owes its elegance, even its treble supporting pylons, which avoid logs that remain entangled during floods, to the white scrolls on the arches and the four allegorical statues that decorate the corners and depict the Four Seasons. The latter were placed in 1608 for the occasion of the wedding of Cosimo II with Magdalena of Austria.


The Ponte Santa Trìnita is a Renaissance bridge in Florence, Italy, spanning the Arno. The Ponte Santa Trìnita is the oldest elliptic arch bridge in the world, characterised by three flattened ellipses. The outside spans each measure 29 m with the centre span being 32 m in length.