Completed in 1690, the first bridge located roughly where Langebro is today was known as Kalvebodbro (Kalvebod Bridge) and connected the Western Rampart's Rysensteen Bastion on Zealand with Christianshavn Rampart's Christianshavns Vold#Kalvebod Bastion on Christianshavn. It was a wooden structure with a drawbridge in the middle that allowed ships to pass. The bridge was built for the military but was also open to civilian pedestrians.[1]
The bridge was refurbished several times. It was widened in 1875–76.
Plans for a new Langebro were first presented in 1885 but not realized until 1903. The new bridge was located 400 ft to the south of the old one, Vestre Boulevard (now H. C. Andersens Boulevard) and connected to the Amager Boulevard on the other side of the harbor. It was a swing bridge resting on nine stone pillars.
With growing automobile traffic, the new bridge soon became outdated and a new temporary bridge was constructed in 1930. The bridge was subject to sabotage on 23 March 1945.[2]
The temporary bridge was replaced by the current Langebro in 1954.[3]
Lille Langebro
Lille Langebro pedestrian and cycling bridge north of Langebro was completed in 2019.[4][5]
Cultural references
Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author, Hilarius Bookbinder, mentions the bridge in Stages on Life's Way (1845): "Langebro [Long Bridge] has its name from its length; that is, as a bridge it is long but is not much as a roadway, as one easily finds out by passing over it. Then when one is standing on the other side in Christianshavn, it in turn seems that the bridge must nevertheless be long, because one is far, very far away from Copenhagen." (Stages on Life's Way p. 259)
The Danish-American 1961 cult filmReptilicusincludes a sequence with crowds of panic-stricken people seeking to escape a giant monster by running or riding bicycles across Langebro; when the bridge-keeper panics and opens the bridge, many of the people fall through the gap into the water below.[7] On the film's American poster, Langebro is painted to look like San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.[8]
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