The Pont Neuf: why is the oldest bridge in Paris called 'new'?

A neat paradox. And it isn't the only one the bridge has to offer: it began with a funeral, a king insisted on crossing it too early, and the monarch on its statue is partly made of Napoleonic metal.

Why is it called the Pont Neuf?

Because of what was new about it. Before the Pont Neuf, the bridges of Paris were lined with houses: crossing the river meant squeezing down a narrow, dark and sometimes dangerous street, with homes on both sides. As the City of Paris itself explains, those bridges didn't always stand up to the river's floods or to the weight of the buildings piled on top of them.

The Pont Neuf broke with all of that. There were no houses on it, so from the bridge you could actually see the Seine. It had pavements, the first in Paris, so people on foot could walk clear of the mud, the splashes and the horses. And over each pier, semicircular stone bays jutted out above the water, where for a time merchants set up shop. They're still there.

The intriguing part is that it wasn't meant to be like this. The first design included houses, like every other bridge, and cellars had even been built on each pier ready for them. It was Henri IV who changed the plan when work started again: according to a historian of the time, because the houses would have blocked the view of the Louvre.

Other bridges kept their houses for a long time. On the Pont Marie, for example, an edict ordered them to be pulled down in 1786, almost two centuries later.

When was the Pont Neuf built?

It got off on the wrong foot. Henri III set the first stone in place on 31 May 1578, a Saturday, and the king was not in a good way: earlier that day he'd seen the cortège of Quélus and Maugiron, two of his favourites, fallen in a duel. He wore such a gloomy face that the local jokers renamed the project the "Pont des Pleurs", the Bridge of Tears. Luckily for the tourist trade, the nickname didn't catch on.

Then came the Wars of Religion and a shortage of cash, and the site lay idle for the best part of a decade. It was the next king, Henri IV, who got it going again: he wanted a bridge that was solid, handsome and, above all, useful to the people of Paris. It was finished in his reign, in 1606 or 1607, depending on which source you read.

The chronicler L'Estoile recorded a scene in his diary that tells you all you need to know about the man. In 1603, with the bridge not yet entirely safe, Henri IV was set on crossing it from end to end. He was told that more than one person, testing it, had ended up in the water with a broken neck. His reply, so it was said: none of those poor souls had been a king. Not like him, you understand. Humility was never his strong point.

What went on on the Pont Neuf?

Everything. Once it opened, it quickly became the beating heart of working-class Paris. A permanent fair, in effect. In the seventeenth century it was the haunt of tooth-pullers, charlatans and light-fingered pickpockets. The comic actor Tabarin put on his farces there, and Brioché's puppets were close by. A poet of the time, Berthaud, summed it up as the meeting place of the quacks: the "rendez-vous des charlatans".

A story also did the rounds about a penniless poet who struck a deal with one of those tooth-pullers: for ten sous, a handful of coins, he'd let him take out two teeth in front of the crowd and swear at the top of his voice that he felt nothing. He was the advert.

Pamphlets and gazettes were sold on the bridge too, until a regulation of 1649 drove the sellers off, largely under pressure from the booksellers. Those sellers were the ancestors of the bouquinistes, the booksellers whose green boxes line the quays today. And on the bridge itself, for a long time, stood a great water pump, La Samaritaine, which raised water from the Seine for the palaces.

Who is the king on the Pont Neuf statue?

Henri IV, on horseback, on the strip of land that joins the bridge to the tip of the island. But the statue you see isn't the first.

The first was commissioned by his wife, Marie de' Medici, while the king was still alive, and it arrived in 1614, when he was already dead. According to the City of Paris, it was the first equestrian statue of a French king put up in a public square in the city. In 1792, in the middle of the Revolution, it was melted down.

The present one dates from 1818 and is the work of the sculptor Lemot. And here's the irony: according to the City of Paris, it was cast from the bronze of Napoleon's column at Boulogne-sur-Mer and a statue of General Desaix. A king, cast in an emperor's metal. In Paris, even bronze changes sides. To bring it from the workshop, Parisians stepped in for the oxen and dragged it themselves for three days over six kilometres; sixty horses handled the final leg.

The 2004 restoration turned up another surprise: inside the horse were seven sealed lead boxes containing documents. Some people add that a Bonapartist founder hid a statuette of Napoleon in the king's arm. We'll tell that one for what it is: a story that does the rounds, and one we haven't been able to confirm in any reliable source.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: the Pont Neuf is the oldest of the Paris bridges still standing; it was called "new" because it was a novelty to have no houses on it and to have pavements, the first in the city.
• Fact: Henri III laid the first stone on 31 May 1578, the day of his favourites' funeral; the "Bridge of Tears" nickname is an old anecdote handed down.
• Sources disagree: the works are dated as finished in 1606 or in 1607.
• Attributed saying: that none of those who fell into the river was a king like him comes from a chronicler, with a "so it's said".
• A story handed down: the poet who let two teeth be pulled, told from an old print.
• Fact: the 1818 statue was cast with Napoleonic bronze, and seven lead boxes were found inside it in 2004.
• Unconfirmed: the statuette of Napoleon hidden in the king's arm.

Where to hear it

The Pont Neuf has two stops near the start of "The Île de la Cité: from the Pont Neuf to Notre-Dame", Podtour's free route in Paris. "The Bridge of Tears" is heard on the bridge itself, beside its half-moon bays, and explains why the oldest is called new. Just before it, "A bronze king with a Napoleonic past" stands you in front of Henri IV and his horse full of surprises.

That's eleven stops in just over a kilometre, from the western tip of the island to the forecourt of Notre-Dame, tracing the final day of the Templars' last Grand Master. Everything is heard from the street.

If you're planning your trip, our Paris guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Ville de Paris, "Paris et ses ponts, toute une histoire" (in French). https://www.paris.fr/pages/paris-et-ses-ponts-toute-une-histoire-7466
• Ville de Paris, "Le Pont-Neuf, plus vieux pont de Paris, est aussi un refuge pour les oiseaux" (in French). https://www.paris.fr/pages/restaure-le-pont-neuf-va-bientot-retrouver-son-eclat-d-antan-17434
• Ville de Paris, "Paris, un musée à ciel ouvert : les statues royales", 2022 (in French). https://www.paris.fr/pages/paris-un-musee-a-ciel-ouvert-les-statues-royales-20266
• Félix and Louis Lazare, Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues de Paris et de ses monuments, Paris, 1844, entry "Pont-Neuf"; digitised copy on archive.org. https://archive.org/details/dictionnaireadm00lazagoog
• Ville de Paris, "Les bouquinistes et Paris, histoire d'amour en capitale" (in French). https://www.paris.fr/pages/les-bouquinistes-et-paris-histoire-d-amour-en-majuscules-7886
• Édouard Fournier, Histoire du Pont-Neuf, Paris, Dentu, 1862, vol. I; digitised copy on archive.org (in French). https://archive.org/details/histoiredupontne01four