For Valentine’s Day – The Not So Romantic View Of The Love Lock

This week people all over the world will celebrate their love for each other with cards, flowers and chocolates. Some couples, however, choose a more public show of their commitment in the form of the Love Lock. Padlocks are inscribed with their initials, locked on a bridge and the key thrown into the river below. It is believed that the tradition goes back to the Great War when a Serbian Schoolmistress had her heart broken by an Officer who fell in love with another woman whilst fighting in Greece. Other local women began placing locks on the bridge where the ill-fated couple used to meet, in the hope that their own loves would endure. 

In the early 2000’s padlocks began to appear on bridges all over Europe and as the practice grew, concerns were raised about the damage they might be doing. It was felt that the padlocks detracted from the beauty of the bridge’s architecture and engineers warned that corrosion could damage the structure or that the weight of so many padlocks could overload the bridge and cause it to collapse; indeed, this is what happened in 2014 when part of a parapet of the Pont des Arts in Paris fell into the Seine.  

In some cities, measures have been put in place to stop couples putting padlocks on bridges. In Berlin and Venice, it is simply a crime but in Moscow, purpose-built iron trees have been erected for the love tokens. Panels have been placed on the Forth Bridge solely for the purpose of the love lock, payments for the privilege of putting one there raising over £10,000 for the Queensferry RNLI. There are also websites where couples can send virtual love locks, which is maybe not quite so romantic, but it keeps the structural engineers happy.