Millau Viaduct

The bridge appears through the cloud layer — seven slender piers carrying the road across the Tarn valley, the tallest of them reaching 343 metres, higher than the Eiffel Tower. The Millau Viaduct, in southern France, turns infrastructure into spectacle, a cable-stayed bridge so improbable in its setting that drivers cross it in silence and then pull over to look back.

The viaduct carries the motorway between the Causse Rouge and the Causse du Larzac, its deck floating some 270 metres above the Tarn, and it is the tallest bridge in the world; Norman Foster and the engineer Michel Virlogeux designed it, and it opened in December 2004 after three years of construction. The cables fan from the pylons like the rigging of a fleet under sail, which was the intention. Driving over barely registers the height; the way to understand it is from below — the visitor centre at the foot of pier P2 tells the story of its construction, the old construction tracks are open to walkers, and the village of Peyre, on the Plus Beaux Villages list, faces the bridge across the river. On autumn mornings the valley fills with cloud and the viaduct stands on nothing. Around it the Grands Causses, high empty limestone plateaux, offer walking across some of the loneliest country in France.