Nuselský Bridge is one of the key transportation structures in Prague

Prague - One of the key constructions of the Prague transport system, crossed daily by thousands of cars, and also an interesting technical and architectural work is the Nusle Bridge, which was opened on February 22, 1973. The bridge over the Nusle Valley, whose construction began in 1965, became notorious as a place where hundreds of suicides have ended their lives by jumping into the forty-meter deep ravine.

Plans for bridging the deep Botič Valley were conceived as early as the beginning of the 20th century, but it was not until the turn of the 50s and 60s that an architectural competition was organized, from which the design by the trio of architects Vojtěch Michálek, Stanislav Hubička, and Svatopluk Kobra emerged victorious. The construction of the bridge, which connects Pankrác and Karlov and contains a double-track metro line within it, progressed relatively quickly. By the autumn of 1970, a load test was conducted with 66 tanks lined up on the still-under-construction bridge deck.

The Nusle Bridge, which from its grand opening in February 1973 until May 1990 was named Klement Gottwald, is 485 meters long and 26 meters wide, with a height of 42.5 meters at its highest point above the valley. It remains one of the largest structures made of prestressed concrete in the Czech Republic. Five bridge spans with a trapezoidal cross-section are supported by four pillars. In total, the construction consumed around 20,000 cubic meters of the highest quality concrete.

According to architect Stanislav Hubička, the creators primarily focused on the fact that it is a bridge in the city rather than in the countryside. "This means no arch, but rather a straight line that harmonizes with the character of the city as such," said Hubička. They also had to address the height and mass of the pillars.