From Lyon to Arles, the Rhône has always been a difficult river to navigate and cross. For a long time, ferries laboriously served this role, and sometimes temporary boat bridges (Beaucaire, Arles).

If the Romans had succeeded in building a bridge in Vienna, which had collapsed in 1651, only the immense medieval works had managed to cross it again, in the 13th and 14th centuries, under the direct leadership of the popes in Avignon, Lyon and Pont-Saint-Esprit.

Only the first two structures still offered a permanent passage at the beginning of the 1820s, while Avignon, which had collapsed for a long time, was lined with a gigantic wooden bridge but under permanent repair…

The current was significantly higher than for other European rivers (we no longer see it because of the dams of the 20th century), rapid changes in level, the presence of abundant water even in summer had discouraged would-be builders for nearly five centuries!

It was in Pennsylvania (USA) that Judge Finley built the first prototype of a modern suspension bridge, at Jacob’s Creek, in 1802. He used masonry superstructures, wrought iron chains and a wooden deck. Light and easy to build, this bridge was the subject of a US patent in 1808.
About fifteen of these structures were built around the years 1810-1815 in the United States, with a span of up to around fifty meters. However, their fragility to oscillations led to accidents and the premature shutdown of this first version of the suspension bridge.

It was in England that it then experienced a remarkable revival, at the beginning of the 1820s, notably through the works of Captain Samuel Brown at Union Bridge, on the Scottish border, and of the civil engineer Thomas Telford, at Menai Bridge, in North Wales.

The first of these works very directly inspired the projects of Marc Seguin.