The Tolbiac Bridge that straddles the Seine at the base of the Grande Bibliothèque, was completed in 1882, then suffered the usual freezing cold of 1890 which caused considerable degradation. Restoration was effected in 1893 with Damparis stone from the Jura region.
The bridge is comprised of five elliptical arches with a central opening that spans 35m, two lateral symmetrical lateral openings of 32m and two closest to the banks of 29m each, making a total span of 210m.
A little over a century after its reconstruction, the Tolbiac Bridge had suffered degradation to a point of needing huge repair.
Begun in early 2001, under the direction of the City of Paris, a second restoration campaign was conducted by firms specialized in the restoration of historical monuments. They worked on the parapets (brackets, cornices, cubes, bases, balusters, railings), over close to 420 linear metres.
The City decided to replace the original material with speckled Comblanchien stone.
This construction site is remarkable in that it started in February 2001 and was finished only10 months later. It required 450 m3 of extracted and processed hard stone, and incurred numerous technical difficulties with regard to cutting the curved parapets, corner pieces and several massive 2.5m long blocks.