Love locks cause rail to collapse

A SECTION of railing on Paris’s Pont des Arts gave way yesterday evening under the weight of the ‘love locks’ put there by romantic couples.

No one was injured when the 2.4m section of railing gave way. Images posted on to social media site Twitter reveal it fell inwards, on to the pavement.

Police evacuated the bridge and sealed off the affected section.

Romantic couples have been attaching padlocks to the Pont des Arts since 2008. The craze has become so popular that the 150m length of the bridge, which joins the Louvre museum to the left bank of the river Seine, is covered. The practice has spread to other bridges in the French capital.

But last month, Paris’s new mayor, Anne Hidalgo decided to have the padlocks removed from the city’s Pont des Arts.

Photo: Claude Attard