At the beginning of the 18th century, after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the war against the Ottoman Empire, the conditions to revive the economy and trading in the area of Croatia were met creating a need to connect Pannonia with the coastal area by a road through the mountainous area of Gorski kotar. In 1718, the Croatian Parliament approved the proposal to build a road from Karlovac through Novigrad na Dobri, Delnice, and Javornik to the port in Kraljevica. However, the construction started a while later, in 1725, and was fully completed in 1738. The designer and builder of the road named Via Carolina Augusta, today known as Karolinska cesta, was Matija Antun Weiss (1661 – 1738). The road was named after the ruling emperor, Charles IV, who personally traveled the passable section of the route in 1728. The road is around 60 miles or roughly 106 km long and the planned costs were 70,000 forints. In order to cross over certain streams and rivers, several bridges had to be built on the road, typically wooden constructions on stone columns and abutments.
Among the bridges on the River Dobra, the bridge near Novigrad na Dobri especially stands out. It was built using cut stone. The bridge is located in a tame valley of the river not too far from a castle built on a hill at the beginning of the 16th century. It was owned by the Frankopan, Zrinski, and Patačić families. According to some accounts regarding bridge tolls, there was a wooden bridge prior to this one in the same location.
The bridge is 114.5 m long, and 5.8 m wide and it crosses the river with 10 semi-circular arches with a span of 4.9 m. The columns are massive and harmoniously shaped with pronounced extents. The fences are made of stone, 0.5 m wide and 0.6 to 0.75 m high. The bridge grade level is convex with the highest point in the middle of the bridge. In terms of the layout, the bridge is perpendicular to the river flow. It is an interesting fact that, according to some accounts, the owners of the castle and the surrounding properties had to finance the bridge construction even though the road was financed by the Viennese court.
The bridge is a valuable monument to the bridge building skill and it is in relatively good condition considering that it is more than 250 years old and a protected cultural monument.
The bridge on the River Dobra can be reached from an exit on the Zagreb – Rijeka Highway 1 at the Novigrad junction and then by a local road leading to Novigrad na Dobri.
The Franjo Tuđman Bridge (Croatian: Most dr. Franje Tuđmana) is a cable-stayed bridge carrying the D8 state road at the western approach to Dubrovnik, Croatia across Rijeka Dubrovačka near Port of Gruž. The original bridge design was developed in 1989; however, construction was stopped at the onset of the Croatian War of Independence. Named after the 1st President of Croatia Franjo Tuđman, the bridge has been redesigned by the Structures Department of the University of Zagreb.
The bridge is 518-meter (1,699 ft) long, measured between the abutments. The substructure of the bridge consists of abutments, a pier on the western shore supporting a pretensioned girder, and an anchoring pier on the eastern shore.
The supported structure on the cable-stayed portion of the bridge consists of a composite girder, an A-shaped pylon, and the cable-stays. The overall span of the girder is 324.7 m (1,065 ft). Concrete roadway slab is of the generally constant depth of 25 cm (10 in). A total of 38 cable stays have been executed, comprising 27 to 61 steel wire cables placed in protective polyethylene pipes.
The pylon is 141.5 m (464 ft) tall, measured from the top surface of the foundations. It comprises a box cross-section of varying sizes. An additional box girder is executed just below the suspended structure providing it additional support as well as bracing the pylon legs. The cable stays are anchored to the top of the pylon. A special opening has been executed in one of the pylon legs, next to the sidewalk, providing access to the inside of its cross-section, where there are rungs facilitating climbing to the top of the pylon, where another opening on its top allows replacements of the anchors, should that become necessary.
The western part of the bridge comprises a pretensioned girder of variable depth 3.25 m (10.7 ft) at the abutment, 8.22 m (27.0 ft) at the pier, and 3.2 m (10 ft) at the end of the cantilever.
Construction of the bridge started in October 1998. The construction works were carried out by Walter Bau AG and Konstruktor, Split. Construction was completed in April 2002, and the bridge was officially opened on May 21, 2002. The bridge construction costs were reportedly 252 million Croatian kuna (c. US$31 million) making Franjo Tuđman Bridge the most expensive bridge in Croatia.
Stamp Issue: 2018.05.02
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