Erasmusbrug

It crosses the Nieuwe Maas in the centre of Rotterdam, connecting the north and south parts of this city, second largest in the Netherlands.

After costing more than 165 million Euros to construct, the bridge was officially opened by Queen Beatrix on September 6, 1996.

In 1990, one of the review architects, Ben van Berkel, revealed his own design, which was similar to the one Santiago Calatrava used for the Alamillo Bridge in Sevilla, Spain: a single pylon positioned on one side of the river with a backward lean.

In November 1991, the city council chose the highly ambitious backward leaning bent pylon shape and made available the necessary additional funds for the asymmetric bridge.

[7] The thin deck profile was not only aesthetically motivated, but also dictated by a number of technical conditions, e.g., there needed to be a clear shipping height in the centre of the span of 12.5m for at least 200m.

The bridge features during an interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 in the grand final by Dutch DJ Afrojack called “Music Binds Us”.

The bent pylon of the Erasmus Bridge with 16 pairs of front stay cables and 2 sets of back stay cables; back stay cables attached at the minimal height of the third front stay, limiting the cantilever of the upper front cables at the top of the pylon. [ 7 ]
Two box girder spines & transverse sections under the deck of the Erasmus bridge
Panorama of the bridge. From left to right in the background are the New Luxor Theatre ( nl ), the regional headquarters of KPN , Montevideo (highrise) and the World Port Center (highrise)