Origin At the 1878
Congress of Berlin, Principality of Serbia was
de jure recognized as an independent state from the
Ottoman Empire and the great powers of the day decided that Serbia should construct the railway. Not economically developed to begin with, Serbia was additionally pauperized after the
Serbian-Ottoman wars from 1876 to 1878, so it lacked the funds. Prince
Milan Obrenović and the government announced the
request for tender and the bidding was won by a French company. Popular story goes that prince Milan took a bribe of 1 million francs in gold, in order to give the job to the French, but that was never proven. As Serbia was declared a kingdom in 1882, the first passengers were now King Milan,
Queen Natalie and the Crown Prince
Alexander, on the way to
Vienna. When constructed, the long bridge on six, cuboid-shaped stone pillars, weighted 7,200 tons. The Hungarian ship "Alkotmány" was beneath the bridge when it collapsed.
Interbellum Even though being operational, the works on the bridge continued. The grid-like steel construction was added by 1920, while all the works were completed only by 1922. That didn't stop the invading army, so already by the end of April 1941, Germans began the reconstruction. They employed the specialized engineering units and the Polish prisoners. Provisional reparations were completed the same spring, from 23 April to 29 May, and the bridge was renamed the General Will Bridge (
General Will-Brücke). The bridge was inaugurated by the General
Joachim von Kortzfleisch and the train decorated with flowers crossed over it, on 31 May 1941. In any of its incarnations, the bridge was never fully painted. Popular story says that it is because the planners forgot to calculate the weight of the paint needed for the entire bridge. Also, in different periods the bridge had an arched construction, a grid-like one and the combined arched-grid construction. It partially lost importance when the New Railroad Bridge, part of the projected
Belgrade railway junction, was open in 1979.
21st century The bridge wasn't maintained properly since, and by the 2010s, the speed of the trains crossing the bridge was limited to . It became almost completely obsolete with the shutting down of the
Belgrade Main railway station on 30 June 2018 and discontinuation of the railway traffic around the
Belgrade Fortress. It was announced that the bridge will be occasionally used for the next 7–8 months, but that in 2019 the traffic across the bridge will be discontinued. In the summer of 2021 the fire broke out on the bridge, due to the unmaintained electricity cables. City announced that it will inform the public on the bridge's future in 2022. Despite the experts confirmed the bridge can be transformed into the tram one,
President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić said in August 2023 that the bridge will become pedestrian-cycling bridge by 2027, in connection with the
Expo 2027 project in
Surčin. Architect Ivan Ratković, co-author of the 1981 project, continued to upgrade it. Its 2022 version included timber decking of the ground level and the roof, with a total of four levels in between, connected with stairs and elevators. The project now included the tall tower on the New Belgrade side of the bridge, reminiscent of the
Nikola Tesla's
Wardenclyffe Tower on
Long Island, with the Wardenclyffe Hotel.
Helidrome was planned at the center of the bridge. == Importance ==