The Puente de los Franceses (Bridge of the French) railway viaduct is located in Madrid (Spain). Comprising five semi-circular brick skew arch

Skew arch

A skew arch is a method of construction that enables an arch bridge to span an obstacle at some angle other than a right angle. This results in the faces of the arch not being perpendicular to its abutments and its plan view being a parallelogram, rather than the rectangle that is the plan view of...

es, it was built in the second half of the nineteenth century to carry the railway line from the north (Madrid - Venta de Baños - Irun) across the river Manzanares.

Toponymy

The bridge is named after the nationality of the engineers who devised the project, who were of French origin. The bridge is also known as the French Bridge.

History

The bridge was built between 1860 and 1862, along with other construction work on the railway line to the north, which began in 1856, by the Compañía de los Caminos de Hierro del Norte de España.