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The City of Paris undertook a major project starting in the mid-1990s to totally restore the oldest bridge in Paris, the Pont Neuf. The restoration will be finished in 2007, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the bridge's completion in 1607. During the entire period of the restoration, Ben Mittman, a retired professor of computer science and former director of the Vogelback Computing Center at Northwestern, who now lives half the year in Paris, documented the work in black and white photography.
Below is an image of the Pont Neuf as viewed from above, courtesy of a satellite photo from Google Earth.
The center of Paris is the Île de la Cité, an island surrounded by the River Seine. In the image above, the Seine is flowing toward the viewer. The Pont Neuf consists of two spans: the petit bras (small arm), with its five arches, connecting the Left Bank to the Île de la Cité, and the grand bras (large arm), with its seven arches, connecting to the Right Bank. It is this historic monument that is the subject of the website.
The website is divided into four main sections:
History, which deals with the origins of and changes to the Pont Neuf over the years;
Restoration, which presents Mittman's photos, including some unusual features, such as the bridge's 384 mascarons, massive, often grotesque, carved stone heads;
Artists, which looks at the Pont Neuf as depicted in selected art works spanning four centuries, including Christo's wrapping of the bridge in 1985; and
Appendix, which contains information about the photographer, acknowledgements, references, and "The Last Stone."
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