The railings of this little bridge have all but disappeared under padlocks — thousands of them, snapped shut by couples who then throw the key down into the ravine so the lock can never be opened. Kyivans call it the ‘Bridge of Lovers’, and for well over a century it has been the city’s favourite place to propose, to marry and to say goodbye.
It is a modest thing: a slender metal footbridge, about 50m long and a little over two metres wide, arched over a deep wooded alley between Khreshchatyk Park and the parkland running toward Mariinskyi Park. Two things it is not: the glassy skyway nearby that everyone calls the ‘Klitschko bridge’, and the long pedestrian bridge over the Dnipro to Trukhaniv Island. This one predates both by a century, and trades in atmosphere rather than panorama.
The bridge crosses the Alley of Magdeburg Law — the green ravine cut between the hills above the Dnipro — in a single airy arc, sparing you the walk down one slope and up the other. It is metal, with a lattice railing and a wooden deck, and that deck is the whole character of the place: narrow and springy, it flexes and sways when a crowd is on it. The wobble earned it a second, less romantic name — the ‘Devil’s Bridge’ — from passers-by unsettled by the sense that the thing was alive beneath their feet. Stand at the midpoint and the tree crowns close in below, the wooded slopes and a sliver of the left bank showing through the gaps — a framed, intimate view, not a wide-open one.
Work began in 1909, the metalwork went up early in 1910, and the bridge opened on 22 November 1910 — old enough to have seen out imperial Kyiv, two world wars and the Soviet century. The design is credited to Yevhen Paton, the engineer behind the great all-welded road bridge over the Dnipro and the welding institute that carries his name. Sources disagree on the particulars, so take the attribution as settled tradition rather than hard fact — it is why locals also call this the ‘Little Paton Bridge’.
The building method was backwards: the bridge was put together on solid ground, and the ravine was dug out from under it afterwards. The deck went up in early 1910 while earth still filled the gap; only later that year was the soil hauled away to open the alley below. One of the country’s first demountable metal spans, it rests on twelve piles — three under each of four supports — and was load-tested before opening with sand at 400kg per square metre. The corroded original was replaced in 1983, rebuilt to the same pattern; the old ironwork went to the open-air museum at Pereiaslav.
The romance came later. By most accounts the bridge’s reputation took hold in the 1930s, when ornamental lamps and evening lighting turned an ordinary crossing into a stage for courtship. The locks followed: a padlock scratched with two names, clamped on the railing, the key thrown away. The city clears them off now and then to spare the structure, but they always creep back.
In 2013 the legend got a real face. A monument beside the bridge honours Luigi Peduto, an Italian, and Mokryna Yurzuk, a Ukrainian, who met in a wartime camp in 1943, were parted for decades by the Iron Curtain, and found each other again only in 2004, both long grey. Peduto died that same August, months after the statue was unveiled. Most ‘bridges of lovers’ deal in the abstract; this one has a documented love story standing right beside it.
The bridge sits in Pechersk, in the ribbon of parks along the Dnipro’s right bank. From metro Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Khreshchatyk it is about 900m up through Khreshchatyk Park until the arch appears over the hollow; from Arsenalna you approach through Mariinskyi Park. Access is free and round-the-clock. Come in warm weather and near sunset, when the view and lamplight are best, and watch your footing on the wooden deck in winter, when it turns slippery.
Better still, treat the bridge as one link in a longer walk. It threads together the historic City Garden and Mariinskyi Park, beside the baroque Mariinskyi Palace. A few minutes along the same ridge stands the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People — the former Arch of Friendship of Peoples, renamed in 2022 — and there, at last, the wide Dnipro panorama that the little bridge itself keeps just out of sight.
Дуже гарний і зручний міст для прогулянок. Кожного разу із задоволенням там буваємо, а небо завжди виглядає по-новому і особливо красиво. Хотілося б лише, щоб люди краще дотримувалися правил руху: пішоходам слід іти зеленими доріжками у своєму напрямку, а велосипедам і самокатам - по червоній смузі посередині. Через те, що багато хто виходить на червону доріжку, виникають небезпечні ситуації.
Одне з моїх улюблених місць у Києві, і, здається, не тільки моїх. Тут відкриваються дуже гарні краєвиди на Дніпро, Труханів острів і нову набережну. Можна спокійно погуляти природою острова, посидіти з близькою людиною та відчути романтичну атмосферу. Поруч є вихід до парку біля Арки Дружби народів, річковий вокзал, а ще можна влаштувати прогулянку Дніпром. Дістатися сюди легко - метро, автобусом, велосипедом або машиною. Туристам це місце теж дуже подобається, і недарма. Раджу тим, хто вперше у місті, і тим, хто буває тут часто. А ще варто пройтися з моста до Арки Дружби народів і далі пішки на оглядовий майданчик Майдану Незалежності.
Пішохідний міст через Дніпро - одне з найприємніших місць для прогулянок у Києві. Тут особливо тішать свіже повітря та чудові краєвиди на місто, а на заході сонця вони виглядають просто неймовірно. У цьому місці легко відчути свободу і спокій, а панорама Дніпра дарує відчуття близькості до природи. Це чудовий варіант і для пробіжок, і для велопрогулянок, і для тихого відпочинку на лавці.
