Events

"Bridge Encounters"

Thursday, November 30th, 6:00 PM ET

612 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University

Chapels were once the most common type of structure found on medieval bridges throughout Europe, though today only few survive. Focusing on fifteenth-century examples from Germany and Switzerland, this talk considers medieval bridge chapels as small spaces that contoured the experience of travelers across bridges. Sited at the heart of a series of encounters, often at the threshold of a town, bridge chapels engaged the passerby, imbricating them into systems of identification predicated on the bridge as a site of collective striving. Bridge chapels thus raise questions about how the built environment helped constitute medieval subjectivity and community.