Bridges

This book is intended to be an anthology of the important bridges of the past and present, and to present the reader with the evolution of this ancient art. It will be written for the general public but will be a book of high quality that can be enjoyed for the aesthetic beauty of the photographs, or read for an appreciation of human genius and the scientific secrets that exist in the art of construction. The captions will have an important task: carefully planned, these will give significant and detailed information that will induce the more rapid reader to investigate the text, to which some captions may well be integrated. The introductory chapter will offer a general discussion and present bridges from different standpoints (humanistic, philosophical, historical, technical and artistic). The next three chapters (each of which will be split into an introduction and text that discusses a particular bridge, with related photographs, detailed captions, technical characteristics, and historical and artistic references) will deal with historical eras: from antiquity to the mid-eighteenth century, from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, and from the start of the twentieth century to the modern day. One chapter will be dedicated to footbridges, which are architecturally similar to bridges but enable completely different aesthetic and technical solutions to be implemented. The book will be completed with an index.