Pont Alexandre III

The Pont Alexandre III wears four gilded bronze statues of Fame, perched on seventy-five-foot columns that mark the bridge entrances. Tsar Nicholas the Second laid the first stone in eighteen ninety-six to seal a military alliance between Russia and France. Construction finished in time for the nineteen hundred Exposition Universelle, celebrating technological ambition with a single steel arch spanning the Seine. Workers finished the bridge in under four years, creating a lavish connection between the Champs-Élysées and the Invalides.