Viaduct Predel is located above the village Log pod Mangartom, which was completely destroyed by a landslide in year 2000. In November 15th 2000 a rocky landslide set off above valley of Mangart stream. It carried away 150 meters of road Strmec-Predel, and also reached Predelica stream bed. Slightly later a new landslide was set off, which stopped on the bottom of Mangart stream valley. At the heavy rainfall this mass got soaked up with water from inflow of Mangart stream and other smaller inflows. Because of that, on the night from 16th to 17th of November, mud-gravel flow set off, only in few minutes it reached village Log pod Mangartom. During sliding the avalanche carried away or moved residential houses, it also claimed some fatalities. This devastating avalanche at the same time destroyed the stone-arch bridge at Mlinč, and with that it disabled the passage over the pass Predel into Italy.

Across the ravine they first installed a temporarily iron bridge, so the traffic could continue. The construction of today’s bridge started in November 2007, which was very demanding. Viaduct was designed in a way that it fits with the natural heritage and with construction ethics in the Triglav national park as much as possible. Today’s viaduct is 128 meters long, 10 meters wide. Illuminated span arch between pillars is 86 meters, and this arch is the biggest in the Alps today. It overcomes the gorge on the height of 60 meters from the bottom of the canyon. Due to difficult and hard accessible terrain they changed the technology of constructing the arch; initially they wanted to construct it with help of classical panelling. But, for the first time in Slovenia, they used a technic of construction with sliding humpbacked panelling, which was hold in place by wire ropes that were tightened over two pylons. This construction intervention is today compared with viaduct on highway at Črni Kal due to its difficulty. And because of this difficult construction the bridge became an attraction. Viaduct was open for public on January 22nd 2010.

See other bridges in Slovenia!

Tell us what you think about this bridge, it’s architecture, location – here!

Predel
Predel is international road pass between Italy and Slovenia. Predel, which is in Italian called Predil, is located on altitude of 1156 meters; it is a high road pass between valley of Kanal and Upper Posočje above glacial Rabeljsko lake in Julian Alps. Here once was a trading route. [_Read more_]