Millau Viaduct Millau Viaduct The Millau Viaduct (, ) is a cable-stayed bridge that spans the gorge valley of the Tarn near Millau in southern France. In a Franco-British partnership, it was designed by the English architect Lord Norman Foster and French structural engineer Michel Virlogeux. , it is the tallest bridge in the world, having a structural height of . The Millau Viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute axis from Paris to Béziers and Montpellier. The cost of construction was approximately € 394 million. It was built over three years, formally inaugurated on 14 December 2004, and opened to traffic
Millau Viaduct speed of construction then rapidly increased. Every three days, each pylon increased in height by . This performance was mainly due to sliding shuttering. Thanks to a system of shoe anchorages and fixed rails in the heart of the pylons, a new layer of concrete could be poured every 20 minutes. The bridge road deck was constructed on land at the ends of the Viaduct, and rolled lengthwise from one pylon to the next, with eight temporary towers providing additional support. The movement was accomplished by a computer-controlled system of pairs of wedges under the deck; the upper and lower