It would be a lie to describe Wrocław using only keywords such as “individual” or “peculiar.” In Wrocław, places that connect people are as numerous as the hideouts: the main square is a prime example, but also the broad promenades and especially the bridges.
They span the river, linking islands and islets, letting us pass over this moat which somehow found itself inside the city; they are the best place from which to gaze at the city at sunset and sunrise. Bigger bridges, smaller footbridges, railway overpasses. They’re more than a hundred of them here, and it is through them that we experience Wrocław as a space to live in.
“Bridge over troubled waters” is a tired cliché, and the slogans calling Wrocław the “Venice of the North” reek of exaggeration, but if you want to understand what Wrocław is all about, your best chance is to study those bridges. They are unbelievably numerous, often found in places where nobody would expect them. Wrocław itself is a kind of bridge, linking two heretofore different lands, cultures, and customs. The tough, rational, and linear bridge arches over the dirty Oder, whose bed hides rebellious madness.
These contradictions in landscape act upon one another, engaged in a struggle out of which a city is born. Welcome to Wrocław!
