January the 5th, 2025 – Many praise Pelješac bridge for finally connecting Croatian and EU territory and making a trip in and out of Bosnia and Herzegovina a thing of the past when heading from the extreme south of Dalmatia to the rest of the country. Pelješac Bridge, however, isn’t Croatia’s longest bridge…
As Putni kofer writes, following its official opening to traffic back at the end of July 2022, the incredible Pelješac Bridge connected the southern part of Dubrovnik-Neretva County with the rest of the country. Its construction was followed by the whole of Croatia with admiration and great anticipation, with a warm feeling that the south and the north would never be separated again, primarily by the border in Neum, which frustrated many residents during the scorching summer months due to excessive crowds.
Everyone was proud that day and it was immediately clear that Croatia had obtained a beautiful architectural edifice that was soon written about by the international media. Did you know, however, that the amazing Pelješac Bridge is actually not the longest bridge in Croatia?
Although the Pelješac Bridge was by far one of the most expensive and largest infrastructure projects in the entire history of Croatia, spanning an impressive length of 2,404 metres, it still doesn’t own the title of the longest bridge in the country. The bridge that stretches over the Drava River near Petrijevci, not far from Osijek, surpasses the Pelješac Bridge by 81 metres, making this otherwise unheard of construction the longest bridge in Croatia, far from the glitz and glam of the coastline.
This eastern Croatian bridge, as part of the international corridor 5C, was also opened to traffic back in 2022. For several years, it faced public ridicule because it was completed in 2016, but it literally led “into a field”. However, this situation finally changed in 2022 when the section of the motorway connecting Osijek and Beli Manastir was opened.
The bridge consists of two access pylons, Slavonian and Baranja, which rise 75 metres in height, according to Večernji list. The main span over the Drava is 420 metres long, and is suspended from the pylons by steel cables, which makes the bridge special in both design and appearance.
The section over the riverbed itself has a central span of 220 metres in order to meet the navigation conditions, i.e. to ensure a 50-metre-wide waterway, and is 5.25 metres high above the high water level of the Drava.
The bridge was designed by the IGH Institute and is located on the A5 motorway, in the network of important international routes on Corridor Vc, which connects Hungary (Budapest), with eastern Croatia (Osijek), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Mostar) with the port of Ploče in southern Croatia.
