Tours · Saarbrücken · bridge
Alte Brücke
The oldest surviving bridge in the Saarland, this venerable stone crossing has linked the two halves of Saarbrücken across the river Saar since 1546. Its warm sandstone arches once carried emperors and armies, and today they belong to strollers and cyclists watching the water slide quietly by.
About this place
Spanning the Saar between the stately castle quarter of Alt-Saarbrücken and the lively old town of St. Johann, the Alte Brücke is the city's oldest structure and the oldest preserved bridge in all of the Saarland. It was commissioned in 1546 by Emperor Charles V, who is said to have ordered a permanent crossing after a flood left him unable to ford the river, and Count Philipp II of Nassau-Saarbrücken carried out the work to knit his territories together and quicken local trade. Built of the same warm red sandstone that gives Saarbrücken its baroque glow, the bridge originally leapt the valley on fourteen graceful arches shaped with an almost Gothic point. It survived the Thirty Years' War, repeated French occupations, and the bombs of the Second World War, only to be shortened in the early 1960s when a new urban expressway was driven along the riverbank, burying several arches forever. Of the original fourteen, just eight now stand in the open air, and the crossing, once the region's busiest, belongs at last to pedestrians and cyclists alone.
Key facts
- 1546 year — Commissioned by Emperor Charles V, making it the oldest bridge in the Saarland
- 14 arches — Its original span across the Saar, several now buried beneath a 1960s expressway
- 8 arches — The historic sandstone arches that remain visible to pedestrians crossing today
📍 Alte Brücke, 66111, Saarbrücken