Maria Pia Bridge

The Maria Pia Bridge is a railway bridge designed by the French architect Gustave Eiffel in 1877. Its construction resulted from a simple need - a railway line had to be crossed across the Douro River and it was impossible to build docks on the river bed. Eiffel created an arc wider than any previously built, its structure widening at the point where the forces were greatest, with a dead-end straight line for the tracks above.