Sasso Mobile

The bridge of Vizzano owes its existence to the request of a schoolteacher for a way for her pupils to cross the Reno river and get to school even when the weather was bad. Work on the bridge began in 1926. Before its construction, the only way to cross from one bank to the other was thanks to the “passatori,” or ferrymen, who carried people and goods back and forth across the easiest parts of the river. Before the bridge was built, in fact, the village of Vizzano was known as “Barca,” which means boat. The first structure, made of reinforced concrete on pylons, could not hold up to the force of an exceptional flood in1928. In 1930 a second version was inaugurated, this time a suspension bridge attached to pylons anchored to the ground. During WWII, in April of 1943, the retreating Germans dynamited it to hinder the advance of the Allies, who arrived in Bologna only four days later. Nowadays even cars can cross Vizzano Bridge, restructured in 1994, but it still remains a quaint, narrow and somewhat wobbly passageway over the river.