petite-madame:

pawnr:

untilyoufoundme:

Breaking news from Paris! The Pont des Arts, famous because of the large amount of love locks which were placed on its fences by thousands of couples… began to collapse due to the high weigh of these love locks.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, as a consequence, ordered the removal of all the love locks. The Pont des Arts will never be the same anymore.

An international love symbol has disaspeared…

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :(((( this is so sad!

y’all are overreacting, two and a half meters of the railing collapsed, out of the entire bridge it looks like nothing, it’ll be repaired and back up in no time.

I’m not used to vent but as it concerns my home town…(Sorry in advance about my English)

I’m sorry, we are not “overreacting”: we are concerned about an historical monument that is important to us, Parisians, and we are worried for obvious safety reasons. Somebody could have fallen. This isn’t the first time that a part of the bridge has collapsed due to these damn locks, it also happened last summer apparently causing the bridge to be closed.

In addition, if you combine all the weight of the locks together, it’s more than 12 tons of steel and it causes serious damage to the structure of the bridge itself.

This trend has to die like yesterday.

It’s not something that belongs to an “old and beautiful tradition” linked to Paris, the city of Love. It started in 2008-09 in Paris and it blew out of proportion because the vendors right next to the bridge saw a commercial opportunity when it came to selling locks to tourists. It looked like a good idea at the start: the tourists were happy, the vendors next to the bridge were happy and even the Maire because it showed Paris as a romantic city. Now, the Passerelle des Arts is in a piss poor state and so is the Pont Notre-Dame, a little bit less famous.

Not to mention that the tourists throw away the keys in the Seine and that it’s an ecological aberration.

More down to earth consideration: it cost money to repair the bridge and remove the locks every two-three weeks little by little. I’d prefer this money to be used for something else. It’s also difficult to cut the locks and reuse the iron because apparently, they are all made out of different types of metal. In the meantime, and according to Bruno Julliard who is in charge of Culture & Historical monuments at the Paris city hall, the removed locks are kept in a secret location, like the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones movies.

So guys, next time you come to Paris, PLEASE forget about these damn locks. You have 100 ways of proving your love to your S.O when in Paris.

(Source: a-little-yellow-duck-feather)