Most Tumski, Wrocław

Seventeen tonnes of love locks came off Most Tumski during its 2019 overhaul. The gesture had become a local ritual from 2009: couples fastened named padlocks here and cast away the keys into the Oder. New locks are now removed, because the accumulated weight had become a real burden on the structure.

What carries you across the northern branch of the Oder is an 1889, riveted steel bridge with two spans, joining Cathedral Island to Sand Island where a wooden crossing once stood. Crossings at this point reach back at least to the twelfth century, when they marked the boundary between the city’s authority on Sand Island and the Church’s authority on Cathedral Island. In 1423, a Palm Sunday procession passing over a bridge here suffered a collapse.

Notice the metalwork around you: the present bridge was once called Dombrücke, until 1945. Damage from the siege of Festung Breslau was repaired after the war, yet traces of gunfire and shrapnel remain on some elements. Near the Sand Island bank, sandstone figures of Saint Hedwig and Saint John the Baptist have stood since 1893, and the bridge is accompanied by working hand-operated historic gas lamps.