The Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco is a prime example, a genuine suicidal black spot . But if bridges represent the journey of the dead to the otherworld, they are also associated with the return of the dead to the land of the living. A German tradition tells that when crops are plentiful, Charlemagne crosses the Rhine over a golden bridge at Bingen to give his blessing to the fields and vineyards. Bridges are often believed to be haunted, like the crossroads to which, as symbols, they are closely related. The exploitation of bridge imagery is not confined to myth, cinema, and literature.
Bridges are obvious targets in wartime.
Yet while they usually have an undoubted strategic value, the energy and firepower expended upon bridges is often out of all proportion to any military interest the structure might arouse. Probably the best example is the lengthy onslaught suffered by the historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia, not very long ago. Given the ongoing failure of diplomacy in the war-torn states that were once a united Yugoslavia, the destruction of the Mostar bridge is all the more poignant, and doubly disturbing. In ancient Rome, Horatius Cocles was traditionally credited with saving the city from the Etruscans commanded by Lars Porsenna, who were attacking the wooden bridge across the Tiber, the Pons Sublicius. Horatius, so the story goes, fought off the invaders with the help of two noblemen who had been shamed into assisting him, while others destroyed the bridge behind them.