Kładka Magdaleny Abakanowicz, Warszawa

This is Kładka Magdaleny Abakanowicz, the pedestrian-and-cycle crossing over the Vistula, linking Śródmieście with Praga-Północ. It connects Karowa Street with Okrzei Street, making the river feel less like a boundary than a shared urban room. Notice the long deck as it travels across the water.

Seen from above, the deck traces a lightning-bolt form, with two changes in direction and wider sections at each bend. Viewing terraces with seats occupy the midpoint, turning the crossing into a place for lingering as well as travel. Corten steel gives the structure its rusty finish.

That industrial surface suits a crossing with a much older story. Red Army engineers erected a temporary timber bridge here in February nineteen forty-five. Before that, interwar Warsaw planned a much larger bridge on this alignment for trams, road traffic, and pedestrians, but it was never built.

Work on the present crossing began with piling in March twenty twenty-two. The last span connected both riverbanks in October twenty twenty-three. The bridge opened on the twenty-eighth of March twenty twenty-four. In August twenty twenty-five, the city council gave it the name Kładka Magdaleny Abakanowicz.