The bridge was built in 1553 over the southern Salso by the order of Charles V to avoid fording the river, which is particularly dangerous during floods. It originally had the appearance of a single-arch "humpback" bridge, which could only be crossed by pedestrians; In the eighteenth century the geographer Antonio Chiusole numbered it, together with Etna and the Aretusa spring in Syracuse, among the wonders of Sicily ("a mountain, a source and a bridge"); around the end of the century the French painter Jean Houel made a watercolor drawing of it, during one of his trips to Sicily. At the end of the works, in 1866, it was inserted in the itinerary of the Caltanissetta -
Piazza Armerina rolling road. The bridge was destroyed on July 9, 1943, by the retreating Germans, and rebuilt the following year. On April 10, 1961, it collapsed again following an exceptional flood; it was reopened to traffic on January 27, 1962. == References ==