The lift span
Rises 24 m.
The Guaíba Bridge, officially the Getúlio Vargas Bridge, is a movable bridge over Lake Guaíba in Porto Alegre, the first of four bridges making up the 7.7-kilometre Régis Bittencourt Crossing that links the capital with the south of Rio Grande do Sul. It is one of Porto Alegre's best-known postcard views. Until the 1950s the crossing between Porto Alegre and the town of Guaíba was made by ferry. As the ferries became overloaded, several projects were put forward, and the winner was a bridge making use of the lake's islands, designed in Germany in 1954 and tested at a hydraulics laboratory in Grenoble, France. Work began on 20 October 1955 with some 3,500 workers, and the bridge opened on 28 December 1958, then considered the largest engineering work in the country. Its best-known feature is the movable span: a 58-metre, 400-tonne section of roadway raised 24 metres between two towers to let large ships through. In December 2020 a new, higher bridge that needs no lifting opened beside it. The old bridge looks lovely from the Guaíba waterfront, especially at sunset.
Rises 24 m.
From the waterfront.
Alongside it.
Over Lake Guaíba, at the junction of the BR-116 and BR-290, Porto Alegre
It has been raised many times for ships; the new bridge since 2020 eases the need.