The Koningshavenbrug (better known as “De Hef”) - Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Across the northern edge of Rotterdam’s old harbor rises De Hef, the city’s iconic railway lift bridge — a monument of steel and symmetry. Built in 1927 to replace an older swing bridge destroyed in a ship collision, it was a marvel of its time: a vertical-lift bridge whose entire central span could rise to let ships pass beneath. For decades, trains thundered over it, carrying goods and passengers between north and south, its motion symbolizing the city’s pulse of progress.
When Rotterdam rebuilt after the Second World War, De Hef remained — scarred but standing, a survivor among ruins. It was finally decommissioned in 1993, after the construction of the rail tunnel that made it redundant. Yet public outcry saved it from demolition, and it became a protected monument, a silent figure in the skyline.
Then came a new dream. The Belgian architect Luc Deleu imagined giving De Hef an entirely different destiny — no longer a bridge for trains, but a bridge for life itself. In his visionary plan, the structure would become a civic platform suspended above the city: a place where every key event in human life — birth, marriage, death — would be officially declared. The bridge, with its 360-degree view over Rotterdam, would become a stage for existence, a place where the city could literally rise to mark its most intimate moments.
The plan was never realized, but its spirit endures. De Hef still towers over the water — a relic of movement, a monument to imagination, and a reminder that even in a city defined by rebuilding, some structures continue to lift not trains, but the human story itself.
