Tavanasa Bridge

The Tavanasa Bridge spans the Vorderrhein (the young Rhine) in the valley below Breil/Brigels, a short walk from the Tavanasa-Breil/Brigels railway station. It is not a famous tourist sight — most visitors don't know it exists — but for anyone interested in engineering or architecture, it is a remarkable object.

Robert Maillart is one of the great bridge engineers of the 20th century, and his reinforced concrete arches changed how the world thinks about concrete structures. The Tavanasa bridge is modest in scale but striking in its slenderness. Standing underneath and looking at the arch, you understand immediately why Maillart's work mattered.

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A story
The original Tavanasa Bridge was built in 1905 by Robert Maillart, the Swiss engineer who revolutionised the use of reinforced concrete for bridges. It was one of his earliest and most experimental designs — a three-hinged arch that dispensed with conventional solid spandrels and showed that concrete could be used in elegant, almost impossibly thin forms. A flood destroyed it in 1927. The replacement, built in 1930, used Maillart's refined principles and still stands today.