Paris
Love Locks on Paris Bridges
June 2015
By the late 2000s, visitors to Paris were attaching inscribed padlocks, known as love locks, to bridge railings and often throwing the keys into the Seine. The gesture was intended to symbolize an enduring relationship. It became especially associated with the Pont des Arts and Pont de l’Archevêché, but it was a recent visitor custom rather than a longstanding Parisian tradition.
The growing mass of locks created safety and heritage-preservation problems. On June 8, 2014, part of the mesh railing on the Pont des Arts collapsed under their weight. In June 2015, Paris removed the lock-covered railings. More than one million locks were reported removed from the Pont des Arts, while locks from the Pont des Arts and Pont de l’Archevêché together weighed approximately 45 metric tonnes.
Transparent panels subsequently replaced the mesh railings to prevent additional locks from being attached. These photographs document the scale the custom had reached in 2015, the year Paris carried out the major removals.
