The Roman bridges were built by the Romans. There were bridges of different sizes. These bridges were built with stone and they followed an arch-like structure.

Most of these used materials that were concrete. The list of the bridges of Rome features a total of 330 Roman stone engineers. There is a count of 54 Roman aqueduct bridges. Some surveys’ have given some different results.

Ancient Roman Bridges

According to a survey, there were almost 930 bridges that were built in the ancient Rome. The Roman bridges were semicircular in shape. There were some segmental arches. This shape was less than a semi-circle.

The Romans built both the varieties of single spans and also multiple arch aqueducts. Roman engineers were among the first of the engineers of the world. They were also considered as the only engineers at that time till the industrial revolution.

The bridges were made up of the concrete and the outside of the structure was covered with brick. It was the Roman invention that discovered the segmental arch bridge. There is a very famous 330m long Limya Bridge I the south-western region.

The Trajan Bridge is an example of a bridge that is arched shaped and has been made out of wood.

The arch shape

The ancient Romans were influenced very much by the circular shape. Thus the arch shape was like a half of a part of the circular shape.

Some of the typical features of the bridges are as follows:

1. Most of them were around 5 meters long.

2. Most of these bridges were had a mild kind of slope

3. The work was quite rustic.

4. Stones were used quite widely to link the joints and also the bars.

5. The stone was used as a gripping tool

Examples of bridges

Pons Aemilius

Pons Aemilius is an example of a very famous bridge that was build around 142 BC. It was considered as the stone bridge of Rome. The largest bridge was the Trajan Bridge that was built over the Danube River. This remained for quite some time as the longest bridge both overall and also in the terms of the length.

The Roman engineers built bridges that were either stone arches or they were stone pillar bridges. These bridges were made over the rivers. There was also a bridge that was constructed over the largest river Nile.

Some more examples of bridges are the Roman Bridge, Ponte Milvio in Rome, Pons Aemilius in Italy, etc.