VENICE, Aug. 11 — For centuries, there was only one bridge across the Grand Canal, perhaps the world’s most magical stretch of water. The third and last one went up 73 years ago. Those facts alone would have been enough to draw a crowd as the center span of a new bridge, a sleek red steel spine nearly 190 feet long, was carefully fitted into place on Saturday.
But this crucial moment in the construction of the new bridge drew a vocal little pack of Venetians for other reasons: It cost a lot. It was delayed. It will be hard for people in wheelchairs to cross. And perhaps most of all, the bridge is defiantly, if elegantly, modern — a departure, love or hate it, that has Venice asking if this is how it wants to define itself.
“It’s emotional because it’s something new,” said Renata Capitanio, 49, a fan of the bridge who has photographed its construction nearly every day. “It’s progress in a Venice that is always static, always stuck in its traditions.”
Amedeo Bonini, 62, who owns a small software company, politely disagreed. “It’s completely useless,” he said, disputing that Venetians resist change; it is just this change he does not like.
“It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s in a degraded area,” he said. “I don’t know the exact price, but it’s absolutely exorbitant, totally excessive.”
Venice was founded 1,600 years ago as a water-protected haven for people fleeing barbarians, and, fair or not, it has faced charges in recent decades of retreating from the modern, at least as far as its architecture is concerned. Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier wanted to build here but had no luck.
But five years ago, the acclaimed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was able to land the contract for the city’s newest bridge, even with his reputation for modernism. In flexible designs often modeled on the human body, he has built two dozen bridges around the world and the Olympic Sports Complex in Athens. He is also commissioned to build the PATH train terminal at the World Trade Center in New York and a 2,000-foot spire in Chicago expected to become the second-tallest building in the world.
In practical terms, the bridge is meant to make it easier to move — on foot, of course — between the train station and the bus terminal at Piazzale Roma, major transportation centers in the north of Venice. The bridge may be red but it is svelte and, supporters say, gracefully unobtrusive; when completed, it will extend 308 feet with no cables. To connect it to tradition, the bridge will be partly built with local Istrian marble.
Despite the nod to history, the bridge has faced intermittent grumbling since the contract was awarded in 2002, splitting the city between strong supporters and detractors. Still, however deeply felt, the opposition never hit a decisive crest even as the span’s construction dragged on for years and its cost more than tripled to nearly $14 million.
And just after noon on Saturday, it became officially too late.
Earlier this week, the huge central span was assembled and floated into place by barge. In a bit of public engineering theater on Saturday, the span was first rotated 180 degrees, then the barge carrying it inched its way between two buttresses that extend from either shore. The span was lifted above the buttresses with enormous hydraulic jacks, painstakingly lowered into place and welded fast.
After years of fuss, the end seemed slightly anticlimactic: when the span finally came to rest after 1 p.m., a few cheers went up, and the crowd went home.
Salvatore Vento, Venice’s head of public works and overseer of the bridge project, said it was vital for improving the flow of millions of tourists and residents. Artistically, he said, it sent the right message about Venice’s willingness to modernize, however much it might earn its living on its long past.
“In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was contested but now it is the symbol of the city,” he said. “In time I think this will become a symbol of Venice. It will enter into the history of the city.”
The bridge will not open until December. At the moment, it has no name.
It may be worth noting that the city’s most famous bridge, the Ponte di Rialto, finished in 1591, has not been universally loved over the years. “As a work of art, we must frankly admit, the bridge lacks distinction,” one of the city’s 20th-century historians, John Julius Norwich, wrote.
Yet it has stood as an icon of Venice. “Somehow,” Mr. Norwich wrote, “it gets by.”
The Rialto was, in fact, the only bridge across the Grand Canal until 1854, when Ponte dell’Accademia was erected. The third bridge, Ponte degli Scalzi, which means “bridge of the barefoot,” was finished in 1934.
Peter Kiefer contributed reporting.
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