
Completed back in 2003 - but still right up there as an outstanding example of construction ingenuity.
This "Water Bridge" in Germany is a channel-bridge over the river Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of their unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin, and it took six years to build at a cost of around 500 million euros. The massive undertaking connects Berlin's inland harbour with the ports along the Rhine river. At the centre of the project is Europe's longest water bridge measuring in just shy of a kilometre at 918 meters long. The huge tub to transport ships over the river Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.
The water bridge will enable river barges to avoid a lengthy and sometimes unreliable passage along the Elbe. Shipping can often come to a halt on the stretch if the river's water mark falls to unacceptably low levels.