The bridge has the power to unite. In Istanbul, this power carries a certain element of enchantment.

With its three bridges over the Bosphorus Strait, the Turkish metropolis is one of the most fascinating cities in the world as it straddles two continents: Europe and Asia.

After the first bridge - 15 July Martyrs Bridge – was opened 1973, two more were to follow, both with the involvement of Webuild. The next one - Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, named after the Conqueror of Constantinople - opened in 1988. The third – Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge – would follow in 2016. Located to the north near the Black Sea, it carries the weight of history. Work on the bridge started on May 29, the day when Constantinople was conquered. The day of its inauguration, August 26, recalled Turkey’s war with Greece.

Designed to relieve traffic congestion in a city of 15 million inhabitants and create a better route for commerce between the two continents, its beauty is only matched by the ingenuity behind its construction. It is a hybrid between a cable bridge and a suspension bridge, but nevertheless takes the title as the world’s widest suspension bridge with a single deck slab at 59 metres. There are eight vehicle lanes, four for each direction. Then there are two lines for high-speed trains. The towers, built in the shape of the letter A, are the tallest of their kind in the world at approximately 320 metres, surpassing the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It is 2.164 metres long and was tested for its resistance to winds of up to 300 kilometres per hour. However, when winds reach 100 kilometres per hour, it is closed to traffic because vehicles appear to resist less than the bridge itself.

The Batmobile is a different story: it crossed the bridge for one of the films of the famous superhero. Every day, the bridge serves more than 135,000 vehicles in both directions.