Capodarso bridge
The Capodarso bridge is a 16th-century arch bridge that crosses the southern Salco on the border between the current municipalities of Caltanissetta and Enna. It takes its name from the nearby Capodarso mountain.
History[edit]
The bridge was built in 1553 over the southern Salso by the order of Charles V[1] to avoid fording the river, which is particularly dangerous during floods.[2] It originally had the appearance of a single-arch "humpback" bridge, which could only be crossed by pedestrians;[1] on the sides there were statues representing the twelve apostles.[3] In the eighteenth century the geographer Antonio Chiusole numbered it, together with Etna and the Aretusa spring in Syracuse, among the wonders of Sicily ("a mountain, a source and a bridge");[1][4] around the end of the century the French painter Jean Houel made a watercolor drawing of it, during one of his trips to Sicily.[1]
Although it was located exactly on the border with Castrogiovanni, the bridge remained the property of Caltanissetta, as attested by a document dated 1620 in which the maintenance of the entire work was attributed to the municipality of Caltanissetta.[3]
In 1842, it underwent a restoration commissioned by the provincial council, but only after the unification of Italy, in 1863 (or already in the two-year period 1847–48, according to another source) the original form was totally distorted: two small side arches were built alongside the main arch which made it flat, and it was enlarged to make it suitable for the passage of carts.[5] At the end of the works, in 1866, it was inserted in the itinerary of the Caltanissetta - Piazza Armerina rolling road.[1]
The bridge was destroyed on July 9, 1943, by the retreating Germans, and rebuilt the following year. On April 10, 1961, it collapsed again following an exceptional flood; it was reopened to traffic on January 27, 1962.[1]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f "Ponte Capodarso - Storia di Caltanissetta - La Piccola Atene". 2016-06-02. Archived from the original on 2016-06-02. Retrieved 2023-08-30.
- ^ "Archivio Nisseno - Anno XI, n°20". Storia Patria Caltanissetta (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-08-30.
- ^ a b Giuseppe Saggio, Images of a city , in Caltanissetta between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries , Caltanissetta, Lussografica, 1993, p. 146.
- ^ Chiusole, Antonio (1759). Il Mondo Antico, Moderno, e Novissimo, Ovvero, Breve Trattato dell'Antica, e Moderna GEOGRAFIA. Con tutte le Novità occorse circa la Mutazione de' Dominj stabiliti nelle Paci di Utrecht, BADA, Passarowitz, Vienna, Aquisgrando, ec: Opera utile tanto a' Principianti, quanto a tutti i Dilettanti dello Studio Geografico. Vol. 1 (in Italian). Appresso Gio: Battista Recurti.
- ^ Santagati, Luigi (2006). La Sicilia del 1720 (PDF) (in Italian). Vol. 1. Regione Siciliana. ISBN 88-88559-96-5.