There are six bridges in The Netherlands designed by the EU to never exist. That plan did not go so well…

The euro zone consists of 19 countries. Although they all use the same currency they are allowed to make their own design for the coins they produce. However, the notes are the same throughout the euro zone, so how do you represent 19 countries on 7 notes without excluding anyone? The solution was to exclude everyone and feature fake bridges on the euro notes, designed in typical European style, but not modeled after a particular bridge. That would have been a pretty good plan, if the Netherlands had not decided to build the bridges after millions of bank notes were already created.

In 2011 a housing development project in Spijkenisse near Rotterdam in The Netherlands were building another island (The Netherlands is really nothing but a bunch of islands) and needed bridges to reach the Island. Someone came up with the brilliant idea that they could use the bridges from the euro notes and one architect and six million euros later the fake euro bridges turned real.

It’s worth mentioning that the bridges are not identical to the bank note illustrations. First of all there are six bridges, not seven as on the notes. Yet all the bridges are present in Spijkenisse. How? The 5 and 20 euro bridges is the same bridge with one design on each side. Furthermore the bridges are way smaller than what they were probably designed to be. The suspension bridge on the 500 euro note appears to be several hundred meters long, but the one in Spijkenisse measures only around 17 meters.

The bridges were probably made to be a tourist attraction, but that may not have gone according to plan. When I visited the bridges I spoke to some of the locals (who invited me in for soup and provided beer to bring back home, Dutch people are so nice!) and they said that I was the third person they had seen running around and taking photos of the bridges. The third ever… There are probably a handful of tourist arriving here without the locals awareness, but I still think overtourism is not a big concern around here…

One would think that the citizens of Spijkenisse were very pleased with these bridges, making their city famous (at least for weird people like me that find it fascinating to travel to such strange tourist attractions), but this is not the case. The citizens of Spijkenisse have complained that the infrastructure of the city is in a poor state. The city’s decision to spend 6 million euros on building bridges based on bank notes instead of “real” bridges has not been very well received. The euro note bridges do serve a purpose of carrying people to and from the small island, but they probably did not really need to build six…

If you happen to be in The Netherlands this is well worth a visit. The metro goes directly from Rotterdam (metro C to Spijkenisse Central) and Rotterdam can be reaches from more or less anywhere using the intercity trains. The bridges are located here: