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Puente de los Peligros

The Puente de los Peligros, also known as the Old Bridge, is a stone arch bridge over the Segura River completed in 1742 and the oldest still standing in Murcia. Its construction, begun in 1718, took 24 years and was overseen successively by Toribio Martínez de la Vega, Jerónimo Gómez de la Haya and Jaime Bort, who widened the entrances and added two conical vaults at the northern end. In 1850 and 1867 it was extended with metal structures to widen the pavements, which led to the loss of the decorative elements on the cutwaters, including the statues of St Michael and St Raphael by Joaquín Laguna. On the right bank, on the edge of the Carmen district, stands the Neoclassical shrine of the Virgin of los Peligros, by Carlos Cayetano Ballester, which houses the deeply venerated image of the Virgin; locals cross themselves when crossing the bridge. The bridge and the Virgin are mentioned in Federico Chueca's zarzuela La alegría de la huerta (1900). It was the first bridge in Murcia's history to withstand the Segura's periodic floods without problems, including the great Santa Teresa flood of 1879.

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