The exterior of La Caverne du Pont Neuf, JR’s installation encasing the River Seine’s oldest standing bridge, drew crowds in Paris over the weekend of May 23 and 24. Crews worked through the night to drape the 393-foot span in a printed fabric skin. The Pont Neuf, completed in 1607, has been replaced in the skyline by what looks from a distance like a snowcapped massif or a black-and-white mountain dropped into the Seine.
A detail of the printed fabric surface, with JR visible among the folds. (Éléa Jeanne Schmitter)
Up close the illusion is more candid. The surface is unmistakably a photograph of rock blown up to architectural scale. The halftone dots are visible in the folds where the fabric gathers. Lampposts and traffic signs still puncture the cloth at the parapet line, and the stone arches remain visible from the waterline up, so the bridge reads as both itself and something else at once. Riverboat traffic continues under the arches and cyclists and pedestrians cross the deck as usual. From the Pont des Arts and the Pont Saint-Michel, crowds gathered on the embankments through the weekend to photograph it against the Eiffel Tower.
From street level, the installation rises against the Paris skyline, framed here with the Eiffel Tower at left. Pedestrians and cyclists will continue to cross the deck of the bridge throughout the installation’s run. (Éléa Jeanne Schmitter)
The installation, announced in March, is JR’s tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who wrapped the same bridge in golden fabric in 1985. JR has described the work as an allusion to Plato’s allegory of the cave, drawing a comparison between the shadows on the cave wall and the algorithmic feeds on contemporary smartphones. The piece extends a series of cave-themed works JR has produced since 2023, including the Palais Garnier scaffolding installation Retour à la caverne and the short film An Urban Allegory, co-directed with Alice Rohrwacher. The Pont Neuf cavern is funded entirely by private sponsorship and the sale of JR’s works, with no public money, Thomas Bangalter, formerly of Daft Punk, has composed the score for the interior.
Crowds gathered along the embankments through the weekend of May 23 and 24 to view the installation, which is positioned in central Paris between the Île de la Cité and both river banks. (Éléa Jeanne Schmitter)
The interior opens to the public on June 6 and the installation will remain in place through June 28.