Pier (architecture)
A pier, in architecture, is an upright support for a structure or superstructure such as an arch or bridge. Sections of structural walls between openings can function as piers; the simplest cross section of the pier is square, or rectangular, but other shapes are common. In medieval architecture, massive circular supports called drum piers, cruciform piers, compound piers are common architectural elements. Columns stand on a round base. In buildings with sequence of bays between piers, each opening between two piers is considered a single bay. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end that support the weight of the bridge and serve as retaining walls to resist lateral movement of the earthen fill of the bridge approach. Multi-span bridges require piers to support the ends of spans between these abutments. In cold climates, the upstream edge of a pier may include a starkwater to prevent accumulation of broken ice during peak snowmelt flows; the starkwater has a sharpened upstream edge sometimes called a cutwater.
The cutwater edge may be of concrete or masonry, but is capped with a steel angle to resist abrasion and focus force at a single point to fracture floating pieces of ice striking the pier. In cold climates, the starling is sloped at an angle of about 45° so current pushing against the ice tends to lift the downstream edge of the ice translating horizontal force of the current to vertical force against a thinner cross-section of ice until unsupported weight of ice fractures the piece of ice allowing it to pass on either side of the pier. In the Arc de Triomphe, Paris the central arch and side arches are raised on four massive planar piers; the original plan by Donato Bramante for St Peter's Basilica in Rome has richly articulated piers, rendered in solid black. The vaulting they support is in double lines, a familiar representation convention in architectural plans. Four piers support the weight of the dome at the central crossing; these piers were found to be too small to support the weight and were changed by Michelangelo to account for the massive weight of the dome.
The piers of the four apses that project from each outer wall are strong, to withstand the outward thrust of the half-domes upon them. Many niches articulate the wall-spaces of the piers. Column — pillar Compound pier Pilaster Deep foundation
Passerelle Debilly
The Passerelle Debilly is a through arch bridge situated in Paris bestriding the Seine. It is a footbridge. In order to accommodate visitor traffic to the 1900 World's Fair across the Seine, the General Commissioner of the Exposition, Alfred Picard, approved the construction of a provisional footbridge opposite the Avenue Albert de Mun, to join the Army and Navy Halls to the exhibit recreating old Paris, its architect, Jean Résal designed the Pont Alexandre III and the Viaduc d'Austerlitz. The Debilly footbridge had, as well, a succession of provisional names, it was called passerelle de l'Exposition Militaire or passerelle de Magdebourg, only passerelle Debilly, after General Jean Louis Debilly of the French First Empire, killed in the Battle of Jena in 1806. The bridge became a permanent fixture from its original provisional status under the management of the City of Paris in 1906 after it was relocated opposite to the rue de la Manutention; the footbridge is built on a metallic framework resting on two stone piers at the riverbanks, decorated with dark green ceramic tiles arranged in a fashion that suggests the impression of waves.
Along with the Eiffel Tower, this is the second metallic structure that stands as an attestation to the engineering achievements of its epoch. In 1941, the Debilly footbridge was threatened with disappearance when the president of the architectural society characterized it as a forgotten accessory of a past event; as a contemporary of the Pont Alexandre III and the Austerlitz Viaduct, the Passerelle Debilly was included in the supplementary registry of historical monuments in 1966. The bridge was repainted in 1991 and its cladding resurfaced with hard tropical wood in 1997. In 1989, a German diplomat working for the Secret Service of the Democratic Republic of Germany was found dead on this footbridge, several days after the Fall of the Berlin Wall; as it turned out, the footbridge was used as a secret gathering place for the secret service agents of East Germany during the Cold War. It is one of the reasons that pushed Brian De Palma to shoot a scene of his thriller Femme Fatale on that footbridge in 2002.
Bridge History Tourism Information about the bridge Technical Specifications
Paris
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
Alma – Marceau (Paris Métro)
Alma - Marceau is a station on line 9 of the Paris Métro, named after the Pont de l'Alma and the Avenue Marceau. The station opened on 27 May 1923 with the extension of the line from Trocadéro to Saint-Augustin; the Battle of Alma was a Franco-British victory against the Russians in the Crimean War in 1854. General François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers fought the Revolt in the Vendée during the French Revolution. Diana, Princess of Wales died as a result of a car crash in the tunnel under the Pont de l'Alma in 1997; the Zouave, a sculpture of a Zouave by Georges Diebolt, is attached to the upstream side of the Pont de l'Alma. Parisians measure the depth of floods by noting the proportion of the statue, under water. Near the station are the cabaret of the Crazy Horse Saloon and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris in the Palais de Tokyo; the Place d'Alma is at the western end of the Cours Albert Ier et Cours La Reine, which contain some statues commemorating characters symbolising the relations between France and other countries.
The starting point of visits to the Paris sewers in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower is on the left bank of the Seine. Roland, Gérard. Stations de métro. D’Abbesses à Wagram. Éditions Bonneton
Arch bridge
An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its loads into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either side. A viaduct may be made from a series of arches, although other more economical structures are used today; the oldest existing arch bridge is the Mycenaean Arkadiko Bridge in Greece from about 1300 BC. The stone corbel arch; the well-preserved Hellenistic Eleutherna Bridge has a triangular corbel arch. The 4th century BC Rhodes Footbridge rests on an early voussoir arch. Although true arches were known by the Etruscans and ancient Greeks, the Romans were – as with the vault and the dome – the first to realize the potential of arches for bridge construction. A list of Roman bridges compiled by the engineer Colin O'Connor features 330 Roman stone bridges for traffic, 34 Roman timber bridges and 54 Roman aqueduct bridges, a substantial part still standing and used to carry vehicles.
A more complete survey by the Italian scholar Vittorio Galliazzo found 931 Roman bridges of stone, in as many as 26 different countries. Roman arch bridges were semicircular, although a number were segmental arch bridges, a bridge which has a curved arch, less than a semicircle; the advantages of the segmental arch bridge were that it allowed great amounts of flood water to pass under it, which would prevent the bridge from being swept away during floods and the bridge itself could be more lightweight. Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones of the same in size and shape; the Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard and Segovia Aqueduct. Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, e.g. in the Pons Fabricius in Rome, one of the world's oldest major bridges still standing. Roman engineers were the first and until the industrial revolution the only ones to construct bridges with concrete, which they called Opus caementicium.
The outside was covered with brick or ashlar, as in the Alcántara bridge. The Romans introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction; the 330 m-long Limyra Bridge in southwestern Turkey features 26 segmental arches with an average span-to-rise ratio of 5.3:1, giving the bridge an unusually flat profile unsurpassed for more than a millennium. Trajan's bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood; this was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length, while the longest extant Roman bridge is the 790 m-long long Puente Romano at Mérida. The late Roman Karamagara Bridge in Cappadocia may represent the earliest surviving bridge featuring a pointed arch. In medieval Europe, bridge builders improved on the Roman structures by using narrower piers, thinner arch barrels and higher span to rise ratios on bridges. Gothic pointed arches were introduced, reducing lateral thrust, spans increased as with the eccentric Puente del Diablo.
The 14th century in particular saw bridge building reaching new heights. Span lengths of 40 m unheard of in the history of masonry arch construction, were now reached in places as diverse as Spain and France and with arch types as different as semi-circular and segmental arches; the bridge at Trezzo sull'Adda, destroyed in the 15th century featured a span length of 72 m, not matched until 1796. Constructions such as the acclaimed Florentine segmental arch bridge Ponte Vecchio combined sound engineering with aesthetical appeal; the three elegant arches of the Renaissance Ponte Santa Trinita constitute the oldest elliptic arch bridge worldwide. Such low rising structures required massive abutments, which at the Venetian Rialto bridge and the Fleischbrücke in Nuremberg were founded on thousands of wooden piles rammed obliquely into the grounds to counteract more the lateral thrust. In China, the oldest existing arch bridge is the Zhaozhou Bridge of 605 AD, which combined a low span-to-rise ratio of 5.2:1, with the use of spandrel arches.
The Zhaozhou Bridge, with a length of 167 feet and span of 123 feet, is the world's first wholly stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge, allowing a greater passage for flood waters. Bridges with perforated spandrels can be found worldwide, such as in China. Greece and Wales. In more modern times and brick arches continued to be built by many civil engineers, including Thomas Telford, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and John Rennie. A key pioneer was Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, who used much narrower piers, revised calculation methods and exceptionally low span-to-rise ratios. Different materials, such as cast iron and concrete have been used in the construction of arch bridges. Stone and other such materials are strong in compression and somewhat so in shear, but cannot resist much force in tension; as a result, masonry arch bridges are designed to be under compression, so far as is possible. Each arch is constructed over a temporary falsework frame, known as a centring. In the first compression arch bridges, a keystone in the middle of the bridge bore the weight of the rest of the bridge.
The more weight, put ont
Zouave
The Zouaves were a class of light infantry regiments of the French Army serving between 1830 and 1962 and linked to French North Africa, as well as some units of other countries modelled upon them. The zouaves, along with the indigenous Tirailleurs Algeriens, were among the most decorated units of the French Army, it was intended in 1830 that the zouaves be a regiment of Berber volunteers from the Zwawa group of tribes in Algeria—thus the French term zouave—who had gained a martial reputation fighting for local rulers under the Ottoman Empire. The regiment was to consist of French NCOs and French officers. Five hundred Zwawa were recruited in August and September, but to raise numbers to the desired sixteen hundred, it was decided that the pool of recruits should be expanded to volunteers of any ethnicity, so the first zouave regiment was a mixture of Berber, Arab and black volunteers. Twelve years zouaves began to be recruited exclusively from Europeans, a policy which continued until the final dissolution of these regiments after the independence of Algeria.
In the 1860s, new units in several other countries called themselves "Zouaves". The Papal Zouaves were organized by General de La Moricière, a former commander of North African zouaves, while a former zouave sergeant, François Rochebrune, organized the Polish "Zouaves of Death" who fought against Russia in 1863-64. In the 1870s, former Papal zouaves formed the cadre for a short-lived Spanish zouave unit; the "zouave" title was used by Brazilian units of black volunteers in the Paraguayan War due to a perceived link with Africa. In the United States, zouaves were brought to public attention by Elmer E. Ellsworth, who ran a drill company called the "Zouave Cadets"; the drill company toured nationally. "Zouave" units were raised on both sides of the American Civil War of 1861–65, including a regiment under Ellsworth's command, the New York "Fire Zouaves". The distinctive uniforms of zouave units tended to include short open-fronted jackets, baggy trousers and oriental head gear; the Zouaves of the French Army were first raised in Algeria in 1831 with one and two battalions recruited from the Zouaoua, a tribe of Berbers located in the mountains of the Jurjura Range.
The Zouaoua had provided soldiers for the deys of Algiers and in August 1830 the commander of the French expeditionary force which had occupied the city recommended their continued employment in this role. The existence of the new corps was formally recognised by a Royal decree dated 7 March 1833. From their beginning the Zouave units included a French European element drawn from the demobilized Garde royal of Charles X and other Parisian volunteers. From March 1833 each zouave battalion was organised into ten companies, of which eight were Muslim Berbers and Arabs and two French. In 1838 a third battalion was raised, the regiment thus formed was commanded by Major de Lamoriciere. Shortly afterwards the formation of the Tirailleurs algériens, the Turcos, as the infantry corps for Muslim troops, changed the basis for enlistment of the Zouave battalions. For most of their remaining history the Zouaves became an French body, retaining only a limited number of Muslim personnel for specialist functions such as interpreters.
Serving in battalion sized units, the zouaves were reorganized as separated regiments in 1852: The 1st Zouaves were linked to Algiers and central Algeria. The 1st Zouaves had a continuous existence from 1852 to 1949. After disbandment the regiment was recreated between 1956 and 1960 The 2nd Zouaves were linked to Oran and western Algeria, 1852-1962 The 3rd Zouaves were linked to Constantine and eastern Algeria, 1852-1962 The 4th Zouaves were linked to Tunis and Tunisia, they were first formed as the Zouaves of the Imperial Guard in 1854, became the 4th Zouves on the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870. They remained in existence under this title until 1962. At the end of the Algerian War six zouave regiments were in existence, of which the 1er was disbanded in 1960 and the remainder in 1962. Other provisional regiments of zouaves were raised in 1914 and 1939 for the First and Second World Wars respectively. During World War I nine regiments de marche of zouaves were created. In World War II the number reached fourteen.
The zouave regiments raised in 1914 for the First World War were the 9th. The 13th Zouaves were raised in 1919 and dissolved in 1940; the zouave regiments raised in 1939 for the Second World War were the 11th, 12th, 14th, 21st, all of which were dissolved after the fall of France in 1940. Other regiments raised in the Second World War were the 9th, 22nd, 23rd, 29th. In addition, four mixed zouave and tirailleur regiments were raised for the First World War, all of which were redesignated Algerian tirailleur regiments in 1918 or 1920; the 9th Zouaves were the last French zouave unit. The first 9th Zouave regiment existed from 1914 until the fall of France in 1940, a second 9th Zouaves was raised in the Second World War and disbanded after the Algerian War, a third 9th Zouaves existed as a nominal unit from 1982 to 2006. There was no zouave regiment in existence between 1962–82 and none now survive in the French Army; the Zouaves saw extensive service during the French conquest of Algeria at the Mouzaia Pass action at Mitidja and the siege of Constantine.
Recruited through voluntary enlistment or transfer from other regiments of men with at le
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, a part of the Ottoman Empire; the French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense, it has been noted that the causes, in one case involving an argument over a key, have never revealed a "greater confusion of purpose", yet they led to a war noted for its "notoriously incompetent international butchery". While the churches worked out their differences and came to an agreement, Nicholas I of Russia and the French Emperor Napoleon III refused to back down. Nicholas issued an ultimatum that the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire be placed under his protection.
Britain arranged a compromise that Nicholas agreed to. When the Ottomans demanded changes, Nicholas prepared for war. Having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia in October 1853; the war started in the Balkans in July 1853, when Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities, which were under Ottoman suzerainty began to cross the Danube. Led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the advance at Silistra. A separate action on the fort town of Kars in eastern Anatolia led to a siege, a Turkish attempt to reinforce the garrison was destroyed by a Russian fleet at Sinop. Fearing an Ottoman collapse and Britain rushed forces to Gallipoli, they moved north to Varna in June 1854, arriving just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra. Aside from a minor skirmish at Köstence, there was little for the allies to do. Karl Marx quipped, "there they are, the French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible".
Frustrated by the wasted effort, with demands for action from their citizens, the allied force decided to attack Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea at Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula. After extended preparations, the forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and marched their way to a point south of Sevastopol after the successful Battle of the Alma; the Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but at the cost of depleting the British Army forces. A second counterattack, at Inkerman, ended in stalemate; the front led to brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Baltic, the Caucasus, the White Sea, the North Pacific. Sevastopol fell after eleven months, neutral countries began to join the Allied cause. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed this development; the Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war.
It forbade Russia from basing warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became independent. Christians there were granted a degree of official equality, the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute; the Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which the military used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells and telegraphs. The war was one of the first to be documented extensively in written photographs; as the legend of the "Charge of the Light Brigade" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in the UK was a demand for professionalisation, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while treating the wounded; the Crimean War proved to be the moment of truth for Nikolaevan Russia. The humiliation forced Russia's educated elites to identify the Empire's problems and to recognize the need for fundamental transformations aimed at modernizing and restoring Russia's position in the ranks of European powers.
Historians have studied the role of the Crimean War as a catalyst for the reforms of Russia's social institutions: serfdom, local self-government and military service. More scholars have turned their attention to the impact of the Crimean War on the development of Russian nationalistic discourse; as the Ottoman Empire weakened during the 19th century, Russia stood poised to take advantage by expanding south. In the 1850s, the British and the French, who were allied with the Ottoman Empire, were determined not to allow this to happen. A. J. P. Taylor argues that the war resulted not from aggression but from the interacting fears of the major players: In some sense the Crimean war was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat in the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security. Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean war. In the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire
