It is located in the 4th arrondissement, and it links the Quai de Bourbon on the Île Saint-Louis with the Saint-Gervais neighborhood on the right bank.

After the French Revolution of 1848 (during which the bridge and its tollhouses were burnt down), it was restored and renamed "Pont de la Réforme", a name it held until 1852.

This new structure, an arch bridge, was built by the engineers, Edmond-Jules Féline-Romany and Jules Savarin, between August 1860 and April 1862, a little further upstream than its predecessor.

The spandrels above the four-metre-wide piers in the Seine are decorated with stone laurel wreaths surrounding metallic rosettes.

The only modification since then (unlike its much-modified contemporary, the Pont de Bercy) was the replacement of the stone guardrails (badly damaged by pollution) with replica railings in 1995.