Tercer Milenio Bride in Zaragoza, Spain

Zaragoza just hosted the 2008 International Exposition, with Water and sustainable water use as the main theme. Since the city is on the south shore of the Ebro River, and the main Expo grounds were on the north shore, a couple of bridges were built before the event in order to improve communications. The Bridge Pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid was one of them, and I will reserve my opinion for a future post, the other one was the "Puente del Tercer Milenio" or Third Millennium Bridge (celebrating the city's ancient history).

This bridge is spectacular. It is a white concrete arch bridge with a 216 m main span. It has a beautiful shape and clean lines. The bridge was designed by Juan Jose Arenas, Spanish bridge designer (who incidentally was my Bridge I and Bridge II professor at university, but that is material for another blog). Mr. Arenas has designed several bridges, and I recommend a quick visit to the website of his company (do not worry, there is an English version).


I think that Mr. Arenas truly understands the arch shape and how to create some iconic bridges. One criticism is that this bridge is a scaled copy of one of his previous works, La Barqueta Bridge, for the 1992 World Exposition in Sevilla, Spain. I think that is a very valid comment. I would like to hear his opinion on it.

Apart of some photographs, I have included a couple of schematic drawings for the bridge, so that you can appreciate the scale and some of the details.