Top 10 Most Spectacular Bridges in the World

Costing ¥500 billion ($4.3 billion), it survived a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in 1995 that shifted its towers 1.3 meters apart, requiring a redesign that added 3% to costs. Its steel cables total 300,000 kilometers in length, enough to circle the Earth 7.5 times.

Tower Bridge is the most visited tourist attraction in London, drawing more than 9 million visitors annually. Opened in 1894 and designed by Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry, its Victorian Gothic towers conceal a steel skeleton and house two bascule drawbridges that still open approximately 1,000 times a year to allow tall ships to pass through.

Ponte Vecchio, built in 1345, is the oldest bridge in Florence and one of the oldest segmental arch bridges in the world, featuring a 30-meter main span. Uniquely lined with shops — originally butchers and tanners, now jewellers and art dealers — it is the only bridge in Florence not destroyed by retreating German forces in 1944. The Vasari Corridor above it allowed the Medici to cross the Arno privately, a feature not found on any other bridge on this list.

The first Bosphorus Bridge, opened in 1973, was the first bridge to connect Europe and Asia and remains one of the most symbolically loaded crossings in the world, carrying six lanes of motorway traffic across the strait. Its dramatic setting, strung between two ancient continents and illuminated at night, makes it one of the world's most dramatic bridge experiences.

The Rialto Bridge, completed in 1591 by Antonio da Ponte, was the first permanent crossing of the Grand Canal and remained the only one for 300 years, costing over 250,000 ducats to build. Lined with shops and supported by 6,000 wooden piles driven into the lagoon floor, it reaches a single arch span of 28.8 meters.

The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, China, is the longest bridge in the world at exactly 164.8 km, far surpassing the 36.7 km Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the second-longest bridge globally. This viaduct carries the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway over rice paddies, rivers, and Lake Yangcheng, and was built in just four years by a workforce of 10,000.

Henderson Waves, Singapore, stands as the highest pedestrian bridge in the city at 36 metres above Henderson Road, connecting two parks along the Southern Ridges walk. Completed in 2008, its wave-form steel and timber structure — resembling a massive undulating serpent — earned the ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award. Its seven undulating ribs each curve at a 30-degree angle, creating a rhythmic silhouette unmatched in Southeast Asia.