Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge

The Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge links the historic centre of St Petersburg with the Okhta district and remains the first of the city's Neva bridges to carry its roadway along the bottom chord of the span, with the bascule span set right in the middle of the river. The structure has the status of a regional cultural heritage site and, until the 1930s, bore the name of the Bridge of Emperor Peter the Great.

The route of the future crossing was already marked out by Nicholas I in 1829, but for decades only a ferry service operated across the Okhta — neither the depth of the river nor the ice conditions technically allowed a permanent bridge to be built. By the 1880s the question was being discussed again in the City Duma, but the ferry owners, fearing the loss of a profitable trade, stubbornly objected. In 1901 an international design competition was announced, but none of the sixteen entries submitted met the technical requirements; in the end an out-of-competition project by the engineer Grigory Krivoshein and his co-author Vladimir Apyshkov was accepted, the first to propose placing the bascule span in the middle of the channel. On 7 April 1907 the steamer Arkhangelsk sank at the crossing, killing thirty-nine people — the tragedy hastened the final approval of the project.

The ceremonial foundation-laying took place on 26 June 1909, the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Poltava. The spans, each weighing more than three and a half thousand tonnes, were transported over water using the hulls of decommissioned battleships converted into giant pontoons. The bridge opened on 26 October 1911 in the presence of the ministers of internal affairs and of communications. The piers are topped with 36-metre Romanesque-style lighthouse towers — a device rare in Russian bridge-building, more characteristic of late-nineteenth-century German architecture; the towers still house the bascule mechanisms today, and their walls bear bronze memorial plaques with details of the construction.

In 1923 a tram line was opened across the bridge, and in 1956, following the spelling reform, the name was shortened to the modern "Bolsheokhtinsky." A major overhaul of the bascule span in 1983 increased the opening angle of the leaves from 53 to 70 degrees, and a large-scale reconstruction in 1993–1997 replaced the bascule span with a new welded structure and restored the historic inscription "Bridge of Emperor Peter the Great," which for a time gave rise to rumours among residents that the bridge might be renamed.

In 2000 decorative illumination was switched on at the bridge, and by 2010 the tram tracks, which had already been taken out of use in the mid-2000s, were finally dismantled. For the centenary in 2011 the left-bank tower was opened to visitors for the first time — previously no one had been allowed inside. Since 2017 a reversible traffic lane, first tested two years earlier, has operated on the bridge on a permanent basis.

Today the Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge remains not only a working crossing but also one of the city's most recognisable engineering landmarks: its silhouette, with its two lighthouse towers and lacy entrance portals, has long been counted among the symbols of the banks of the Neva.