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From here to there

With 960 bridges, Berlin is not the front runner, but behind the “Venice of the North”, Hamburg, with its fabulous 2500 bridges, Vienna and Amsterdam, it occupies place no. 4 in the ranking of European cities rich in bridges. And Venice? The city has only 400 bridges to offer.
Not only those bridges crossing rivers or lakes count in this particular “bridge competition”, but of course also the numerous elevated crossings of train and rapid-transit railway tracks that began to meander in and around Berlin over the course of industrialisation. With its impressive length of 37 kilometers, the long route of the Ringbahn (Circle line) surrounds the centre of the capital; as a result of the expansion of Berlin beyond the city ring road pedestrian and road traffic increased considerably after the turn of the century. This led to the construction of bridges between the Prenzlauer and Schönhauser Allee stations along the Duncker, Schönfliesser and Greifenhagener Strasse. They were expected to enable the children from the then new housing estates to get to school easily, but above all to make sure workers from the Helmholtz quarter were able to walk to the east side of the Schönhauser Allee train station without difficulty. Its separate building then had to give way to the Alleearkaden (alley arcades) and was demolished. Equipped with four wrought-iron chandeliers, the Greifenhagener Brücke is a real gem of its kind. The beautiful details of this Art Nouveau bridge – punched metal panels with their floral motifs and forged frames – are probably not noticed by very few.