Bridges presentation
The best extant model of
this type survives today over the Brenta at Bassano a Grappa, near Venice. It was built by Palladio in
1561, destroyed in 1945, and reconstructed identical to the original in 1948.
By the mid-18th century, carpenters working in the forested regions of the world further developed
the timber truss bridge. The most famous were two Swiss brothers, Johannes and Ulrich
Grubenmann, who built bridges at Schaffhausen, Reichenau, and Wettingen that combined diagonal
struts and trusses to produce remarkably long spans for their time. The Schaffhausen Bridge (1757),
over the Rhine in northern Switzerland, had two spans, 171ft and 193ft (52m and 59m) respectively,
which rested lightly on an intermediate pier when loaded. It was burned by the French in 1799
during the Napoleonic Wars. One of the few Grubenmann bridges to survive is Rumlangbrücke
(1766), with a span of 89ft (27m).
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