Soaring above a valley through the green hills of central France, a stunning British-designed bridge hailed as the tallest of its kind in the world opened today.
The 1.6-mile viaduc de Millau has been described as one of the most beautiful bridges ever, a work of art as much as an engineering feat.
Its architect, Sir Norman Foster, has said driving across at a record 270 metres (885ft) above the Tarn valley should feel like "flying a car".
The French president, Jacques Chirac, unveiled a plaque to inaugurate the bridge at an official ceremony as an air display team flew past the bridge trailing red, white and blue smoke.
The bridge was built and entirely funded by the French construction group Eiffage, which was also responsible for the Eiffel tower. The first cars will cross on Thursday, one month ahead of the original schedule when work began in December 2001.
Colorado’s Royal Gorge Bridge, towering 331 meters (1,053ft) above the Arkansas river, is the world’s tallest suspension bridge – but it is designed for pedestrians.
The Kochertal viaduct in Germany was previously the highest road bridge at 185 meters (607ft)
Completed in three years, the four-lane viaduct will unlock an alternative route from northern Europe to southern France and Spain.
In a practical sense it ends summertime bottlenecks of Rivera-bound holiday traffic in Millau – best known outside France for the antiglobalisation campaigner Jose Bove’s destruction of a McDonald’s restaurant – but, in historical terms, it adds to the great global feats of architecture and engineering in dramatic style.
Sir Norman said the steel-and-concrete bridge was designed to have the "delicacy of a butterfly". At 343m high, the tallest of its seven supporting pillars is 20 metres higher than the Eiffel tower.
"A work of man must fuse with nature. The pillars had to look almost organic, like they had grown from the earth," Sir Norman said.
The viaduc de Millau became a tourist attraction almost as soon as the work on its seven pillars began, and the town’s mayor, Jacques Godfrain, said it will now continue to draw visitors to his town as well as acting as a bypass around it for about 9,000 cars a day.
Images of the bridge, which dominates the surrounding Rhone valley for miles, have appeared in French newspapers for days. Aerial photographs show the bridge rising above the clouds.
Motorists will pay a toll of almost £3.50 for the benefit of avoiding hours of jams which have blighted the small roads in the valley below the bridge and routinely clogged Millau in the high season.