BRIDGESPOTTING

The Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, Germany, was originally built in about 1910 as a railroad and road bridge. The name derives from the Hohenzollern dynasty, which provided the Kings of Prussia and, after 1870, the German emperors. The bridge has large bronze equestrian statues of major Hohenzollerns on each of its four corners. The bridge was one of the most important bridges supporting the German war effort in World War II. For this reason it was targeted by the Allies during the war, but it was never substantially damaged until it was deliberately destroyed by the German army during its retreat across the Rhine in early 1945. The bridge was almost immediately rebuilt following the war, but as a railroad and pedestrian bridge only. The bridge connects the historic Alt Stadt of Cologne, with its iconic Dom, with the suburban Köln-Messe neighborhood on the east bank of the river.

I spent more than 10 years visiting pedestrian and tourist bridges around the world, and, at the time of my visit to Cologne in 2013, I believe the Hohenzollern Bridge may have had more love padlocks on it than any other bridge in the world. Fans of bridges in Paris may beg to differ, as many of those bridges were completely overrun by padlocks in the mid-2010s. However, those bridges are relatively small compared to the Hohenzollern Bridge. While in Cologne, I did a rough calculation. The bridge is 1,300 feet long, and the fence extends almost the entire length, about five feet high. If a padlock takes up about four square inches, and they are packed in as tightly as possible, then there is room for about 250,000 padlocks on each side. This is space for a half-million padlocks, total, and when I visited, both sides were almost completely full of padlocks.

There is a more detailed discussion of the bridge itself, and the padlocks, in my book, Bridgespotting: A Guide to Bridges that Connect People, Places, and Times.