The Potseluev Bridge is a bridge across the Moyka River in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. The name of the bridge spurred numerous urban legend

Urban legend

An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...

s. The panoramic view of Saint Isaac's Cathedral

Saint Isaac's Cathedral

Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor in Saint Petersburg, Russia is the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the city...

 that opens from the bridge makes it a popular subject of artists paintings.

Name and history

During the first half of the 18th century, townspeople had set up a crossing across the Moyka river from improvised materials at the location of the modern bridge. In 1738 while the granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 embankment

Embankment (transportation)

To keep a road or railway line straight or flat, and where the comparative cost or practicality of alternate solutions is prohibitive, the land over which the road or rail line will travel is built up to form an embankment. An embankment is therefore in some sense the opposite of a cutting, and...

 of Moyka was being established, the wooden pedestrian bridge was built. It had a raising part to allow passage of mast ships.. The wooden bridge was painted in different colours, and therefore was named Coloured Bridge. In 1768 the bridge was reconstructed to accommodate horse traffic. At this time the structure was changed to three-span bridge standing on stone supports. The bridge was named after merchant Potseluev who kept a tavern near the bridge.

At the beginning of the 19th century a bridge no longet met the increased traffic loads, and therefore in 1816 it was rebuilt. The new bridge was built to the design of architect William Heste

William Heste

William Hastie was a Russian architect, civil engineer and town planner of Scottish descent. His name is also transliterated back from Russian as William Heste or, seldom, Vasily Heste....

 as a single span arched bridge. Like other Heste's bridges, it was made from iron cast with granite facing.

Entrance to the bridge features four granite obelisk with lanterns.

Fence pattern repeats the one from the Moika River

Moika River

The Moyka River is a small river which encircles the central portion of Saint Petersburg, effectively making it an island. The river, originally known as Mya, derives its name from the Ingrian word for "slush, mire"...

 embankments. It was made at the Petersburg iron factory.

The first major renovation was made after heavy floods in 1824 and which nearly destroyed the bridge completely.