A bridge is an argument against gravity, made in stone or steel or rope. Every bridge begins as an act of unreasonable optimism: we can get across. The engineers work out the details later.
The Roman bridge at Alcantara has stood for nearly two thousand years. Its builder, Gaius Julius Lacer, left an inscription: “I leave a bridge forever to the generations of the world.” He was not exaggerating. The bridge outlasted the empire that built it, the language the inscription was written in, and every other structure in the valley.
There is something deeply moving about infrastructure that outlives its creators. A bridge does not care who crosses it.