A tiny pedestrian fee once gave this crossing its German nickname, Gröschelbrücke: after the city took over its wooden predecessor in 1812, people on foot paid two pfennigs to pass. That earlier bridge stood roughly 700 metres downstream from here and had begun as a private approach to an Osobowice brickyard. It could be defeated by the river itself, because floodwater covered its approach roads.
The bridge beside you belongs to a much more ambitious remaking of Wrocław’s waterways. Completed in 1897, it was built alongside the new City Canal and Municipal Port. Its structure is deliberately split in two: a single-span southern section crosses the canal toward the lock and port, while the northern section carries eight arches over the Oder and its floodplain.
Stand safely on the pavement and take in the long rhythm of masonry arches, granite-pier construction, and brickwork railings topped with shaped granite slabs. The builders even allowed for future cemetery traffic, a tram route, and a narrow-gauge railway, laying two three-rail tracks into the original design. In the 1920s the bridge was named for Walther Rathenau; after 1945 it took its present name from the nearby district. It has been protected as a historic monument since 1976.
