This morning on my run I was thrilled to see a dozen municipal workers removing padlocks one by one from the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor, formerly known as Passerelle Solférino (the pedestrian bridge connecting the Tuileries Gardens to the Musée d’Orsay).
;)
You can see sky through the finished section on the left. They still had the other side of the bridge to liberate…but how to keep idiot vandals from adding more locks all over again? Unlike the Pont des Arts, the architecture of thin metal wires on the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor doesn’t allow for the Plexiglas panels that prevent padlocks from being attached.
If you’re interested in more news about the destructive “Love Locks” that are ruining the beautiful historical bridges of Paris, check out the No Love Locks website.
Heather, when we visited back in mid-December they were working on what I still thought was called the Solferino bridge, learnt something there :), removing the locks so they must be doing it again. How very sad in that even during the quiet season more & more have presumably appeared.You are quite right that this is just really vandalism & it's horrible to see just the clear Plexiglas panels on the Pont de Arts as they really don't look right. It's a shame they couldn't have sandwiched the exiting panels with something to protect them rather than removing them completely. Obviously the damage was too bad on the original Pont des Arts but I can't believe there isn't some better alternative.