First tilting bridge

The first tilting bridge is the Gateshead Millennium or “Winking” Bridge. Designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects and engineered by Gifford & Partners, it stretches 126 m across the River Tyne in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Some 36,000 people watched the bridge tilt for the first time on 28 June 2001. Weighing more than 800 tonnes and containing enough steel to make 16 Chieftain tanks, it sits on 19,000 tonnes of concrete.

Two other bridges utilizing tilting mechanisms have been built since the Gateshead Millenium Bridge, both in Belgium in 2011. These are the Scheepsdalebrug over the Bruges–Ostend Canal in Bruges, and the Sint-Annabrug over the Dende in Aalst. The Gateshead bridge is still the longest tilting bridge, as the two Belgian bridges have spans of 43 m and 24 m respectively.