**1. Introduction**

This chapter focuses on stone-masonry bridges that were built in Greece during the last 300 years and most of them survive today (**Figure 1a** and **b**).

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Figure 1.** (a) Konitsa Bridge, Ipiros, Greece and (b) Kokorou Bridge, Ipiros, Greece.

**Figure 2.** The royal tomb of Atreus at Mycenae in Peloponnese, Southern Greece.

The use of the stone-masonry arch that is utilized in forming stone-masonry bridges was extensively used in the times of the Roman Empire as part of the transportation system that was established and linked to various provinces of the Roman Empire. Evidence of stonemasonry arch bridges prior to Roman times is not known although stone-masonry structures in the East Mediterranean area for other uses date to prehistoric times. A well-known use of arch/vault stone-masonry structural form is the one that can be seen at the royal tombs, which have been excavated during the last 200 years in many places in Greece. In **Figure 2**, the royal tomb of Atreus at Mycenae, Greece, is depicted where stone masonry is employed to form an underground-vaulted structure with a diameter at its base of 14.60 m and a height of 13.30 m constructed with 33 subsequent series of stone masonry along the height.

The use of such vaulted stone-masonry structures demonstrates the efficient utilization of this structural form in order to bear efficiently the dead loads as well as the weight of the overlying soil volume in a state of stress dominated by compression (**Figures 2** and **3a**). On the contrary, the main gate of the royal palace walls at Mycenae in Peloponnese of Southern Greece (dated 1325 B.C. to 1200 B.C. and excavated 150 years ago), known as the gate of the lions (**Figure 3b**), uses the simple-supported beam-type structural system that characterizes most of the prehistoric and classical ancient Greek stone-masonry construction for above-the-ground structures. The use of the stone-masonry arch/vault-type formation is also evident in the structural system of the royal tombs of the Macedonian kings at Vergina in Northern Greece, dated from 350 B.C. and excavated during the last 30 years (**Figure 3c** and **d**).

**Figure 1.** (a) Konitsa Bridge, Ipiros, Greece and (b) Kokorou Bridge, Ipiros, Greece.

76 Structural Bridge Engineering

**Figure 2.** The royal tomb of Atreus at Mycenae in Peloponnese, Southern Greece.

constructed with 33 subsequent series of stone masonry along the height.

The use of the stone-masonry arch that is utilized in forming stone-masonry bridges was extensively used in the times of the Roman Empire as part of the transportation system that was established and linked to various provinces of the Roman Empire. Evidence of stonemasonry arch bridges prior to Roman times is not known although stone-masonry structures in the East Mediterranean area for other uses date to prehistoric times. A well-known use of arch/vault stone-masonry structural form is the one that can be seen at the royal tombs, which have been excavated during the last 200 years in many places in Greece. In **Figure 2**, the royal tomb of Atreus at Mycenae, Greece, is depicted where stone masonry is employed to form an underground-vaulted structure with a diameter at its base of 14.60 m and a height of 13.30 m

The use of such vaulted stone-masonry structures demonstrates the efficient utilization of this structural form in order to bear efficiently the dead loads as well as the weight of the overlying soil volume in a state of stress dominated by compression (**Figures 2** and **3a**). On the contrary, the main gate of the royal palace walls at Mycenae in Peloponnese of Southern Greece (dated 1325 B.C. to 1200 B.C. and excavated 150 years ago), known as the gate of the lions (**Figure 3b**), uses the simple-supported beam-type structural system that characterizes most of the prehistoric and classical ancient Greek stone-masonry construction for above-the-ground

(a) (b)

**Figure 3.** (a) Reconstruction of the royal tomb of Atreus, at Mycenae in Peloponnese, Southern Greece. (b) The gate of lions at Mycenae, Peloponnese, Southern Greece. (c) Reconstruction of the royal tomb of Philip, King of Macedonia at Vergina, Greece. (d) Interior of a Macedonian, royal tomb, Greece.

**Figure 4.** (a) Map of Macedonia with the location of the royal palaces at Vergina and Pella, Greece. (b) The remains of an ancient Roman bridge at a distance of 25 km from the Macedonian palaces of Vergina and Pella.

Despite the use of arch/vaulted stone-masonry structural formations for these underground Macedonian royal tombs at Vergina in Northern Greece, there is no evidence of such structural formations being used for bridges at that time. **Figure 4a** shows the location of the Macedonian royal palaces at Vergina and Pella in Northern Greece (red arrows).

In the same figure, the location of the remains of an ancient Roman bridge (blue arrow) is also indicated. These remains correspond today to only one main arch with a span of 15 m and a height of 7.5 m (**Figure 4b**). This surviving part of a Roman stone-masonry bridge is dated between 50 A.D. and 150 A.D. and, as can be seen in the map of **Figure 4a**, is located at a close distance (25 km) from the Macedonian palaces of Vergina and Pella as well as for the important cities of Thessaloniki and Dion (30–40 km). An inventory of Roman stone-masonry bridges is given by O'Connor [1]. These structures survive today, located in many European countries, having been in many cases preserved in good condition (**Figure 5a** and **b**) or partially collapsed in other cases (**Figure 5c** and **d**).

**Figure 5.** (a) Roman stone-masonry bridge Pont-Saint-Martin in Northern Italy. (b) The Pont Julien, a Roman stone arch bridge in the southeast of France, dating from 3 B.C. (c) The Pont Ambroix, first century B.C., Roman bridge in the south of France damaged by severe floods. (d) Ponte Rotto/Emilio, Rome (Broken/Emilio bridge). The remains of stonemasonry bridge damaged by flooding.
