Trajan's Bridge over the Danube

Trajan's Bridge spanned the lower Danube near Drobeta, in modern Romania, and was built between AD 103 and 105, between Trajan's two wars against Dacia. Its designer was Apollodorus of Damascus, the architect who later built Trajan's Forum in Rome. Cassius Dio, writing a century later, describes twenty piers of squared stone joined by arches, and admires it above all Trajan's other works. His measurements are probably exaggerated, but the bridge was more than a kilometer long.

Scenes on Trajan's Column in Rome show the bridge with stone piers and a wooden superstructure, much as it appears here. It carried the army across in AD 105 for the Second Dacian War, which ended in 106 with the fall of the Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa, the death of Decebalus and the creation of the province of Dacia. Dio says Trajan's successor Hadrian removed the wooden deck, fearing that the barbarians might use it to cross into Roman lands.