Pulteney Bridge is a bridge over the River Avon in the English city of Bath. It was built in 1773 and is protected by the state as a monument of architecture.
There are only four bridges in the world where shops are located on either side of the bridge coast to coast, Pulteney Bridge is one of them. It is named after Frances Paltney, heiress to the manor of Bathwick, situated on the other side of the Avon, opposite Bath. It was an ordinary village, but Frances's husband, William, decided to turn it to turn it into a modern settlement, a suburb of Bath. And the first thing he needed a bridge to connect the two towns. With his idea for a new bridge, William approached the architects Robert and James Adam. Robert was passionate about building a new bridge, and he turned Pulteney's simple design into a sophisticated structure with rows of shops on either side of the bridge. Adam had been in Italy, and his design shows the influence of the Ponte Vecchio and Ponte Rialto - especially the Ponte Rialto project, which was not realised.
In the form in which Adam designed it, the Pulteney Bridge lasted only twenty years. In 1792 the exterior of the facades suffered from the expansion of the shops, and the floods of 1799 and 1800 destroyed the north end of the bridge. In the 19th century, shop owners completely remodeled their houses, and one of the houses at the southern end of the bridge was completely demolished.
In 1936, the bridge was listed as an architectural monument, and restoration of the original appearance of the facades began. The work was largely completed in time for the British Festival of 1951. Pulteney Bridge is now one of Bath's most famous landmarks, famed for its masterpieces of Georgian architecture. In recent years, the city council has been considering plans to ban traffic from travelling over the bridge and turn it into a pedestrian zone.
