Pont Vieux d'Albi
— the red the cathedral lays on the water.
Not only on a wall.
“The oldest bridge in Albi, begun in 1035 and still carrying foot traffic across the Tarn. It runs below the Cité Épiscopale, the brick fortress of Sainte-Cécile cathedral and the Palais de la Berbie, where the Toulouse-Lautrec collection now lives. The bricks of the bridge are the same warm pink-red the whole city is made from, which is why Albi is called la ville rouge. The Tarn underneath is slow and green. The view back across the river to the cathedral is one of the things people come a long way for.
Pont Vieux d'Albi, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Pont Vieux d'Albi crosses the Tarn River in Albi, the seat of the Tarn department in the Occitanie region of southern France, about 75 kilometres northeast of Toulouse. The bridge runs roughly 151 metres long and rests on eight arches of stone foundation faced in the local pink-red brick that gives Albi its nickname, la ville rouge. It was begun in 1035 under the direction of the abbey of Saint-Salvi, completed around 1042, and is one of the oldest bridges still in everyday use in France. On the far bank, the bridge meets the Cité Épiscopale d'Albi, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2010.
The bridge is built largely from Albi's namesake brick, the warm pink-red briquette foraine fired from clay along the Tarn, which gives the whole city its colour. Beneath the brick facing, the piers are massive stone foundations sunk into the riverbed in the 11th century. The bridge originally carried small houses and shops along its length, the way the Ponte Vecchio in Florence still does, until the catastrophic Tarn flood of 1766 destroyed the medieval superstructure and the houses were not rebuilt. It has been listed as a Monument historique since 1921. The brick has been re-pointed many times but the load-bearing core is largely the original 11th-century work.
The bridge is open to foot traffic and a narrow lane of one-way light vehicles; the main vehicular crossing of Albi has long since moved to the Pont Neuf downstream. The most photographed view is from the right bank looking back at the Cité Épiscopale, with the brick mass of Sainte-Cécile cathedral and the Palais de la Berbie rising above the Tarn. The Berbie Palace now houses the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, which holds the largest single collection of works by the painter, who was born in Albi in 1864. The Cité Épiscopale was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2010, and the Pont Vieux is part of the inscribed perimeter.