The overlooked corners inside

• Pont Pitot

  Standing beside the Pont du Gard, the slightly lower stone bridge under your feet is the Pont Pitot. It isn't Roman: engineer Henri Pitot oversaw its construction between 1743 and 1747, set tight against the lowest tier of arches of the Roman aqueduct to carry carriages and travelers and spare the two-thousand-year-old monument from their weight. Some of its stone came from the very Estel quarry that supplied the Roman bridge, reopened and worked on a large scale during the project. Once it was finished, the French writer Alexandre Dumas was scathing: "What the barbarians did not dare to destroy in the fifth century, the eighteenth century built this against." Controversy aside, the Pont Pitot did exactly what it set out to do, taking road traffic off the Roman arches so they no longer bore the load of passing vehicles.

  Sources: en.wikipedia.org · overpass-api.de · pontdugard.fr

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