Description of the attraction
The Alma Bridge is best known for the fact that Princess Diana died in the tunnel under it. On the night of August 31, 1997, the princess with her friend Dodi Al-Fayed left the Ritz Hotel to meet her death. Ten minutes later, the car, leaving the paparazzi motorcycles at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, crashed into the support of the tunnel.
People in droves went to the place of the tragedy to honor the memory of the princess. Above the tunnel, at the entrance to the bridge, stands the Flame of Liberty - a gilded replica of the torch of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from America to France, a sign of friendship between the two countries. It was here that people began to lay mountains of flowers.
Now many people think that the torch is a monument to Diana. Perhaps this offends both France and America a little. (The Paris Mayor's Office offends - it is necessary to remove the graffiti, remove the bouquets, monitor the safety of the sculpture.) In any case, in 2008, a new Flame of Freedom was installed in the courtyard of the US Embassy in France. The sculpture by Jean Cardo was unveiled in the presence of Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and George W. Bush.
However, the Alma Bridge is interesting not only because of the tragedy played out under it. Opened in 1856, it was named in honor of the victory of the Franco-British coalition over the Russian troops in the battle on the Alma River - the first major battle of the Crimean War.
On four sides, under the bridge, there were sculptures of the military who participated in the battle on the Alma - a zouave (a soldier of the French colonial troops), a grenadier, an infantryman and an artilleryman. After the reconstruction of the 1970s, only the Zouave remained, the rest of the statues are now in other places. It was impossible to remove the Zouave - this is a legendary figure for the Parisians: it was by her that the water level in the Seine was determined. If the water covered the feet of the zouave, the police blocked the passage to the river, and if the water reached the hips, they stopped navigation. During the famous Paris flood in January 1910, the water reached the shoulders of the Zouave! The flood lasted for about two months, the city was flooded so that it was only possible to swim on it. The water rose 8.6 meters. There are many photos left: people sailing around Paris in boats, crossing the streets along makeshift narrow bridges. There is also a photograph of a zouave peeping out of the water.
Now, to officially determine the water level in the Seine, another bridge is used - the Tournelle, but Parisians know that the easiest way is to look at the Zouave under the Alma Bridge.
