Swing (chain) bridge

The manual swing bridge over the castle channel on Žvejų Street is a unique object of technical heritage. The bridge was built in 1855 of riveted iron, decorated with chains, thus referred to as the Chain Bridge (Kettenbrücke) until the World War II. The mechanism of the bridge is manual. Two people can turn the bridge to open the channel to the former moat (defensive ditch) for boats.
The citizens found the necessity for a bridge only in the second half of the 18th century, when Klaipėda castle lost its strategic importance. The city’s merchants started using the moat for keeping logs, which required a separate channel, connecting the moat and Dangė River. The channel was excavated and the first wooden bridge was built in the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The bridge had a narrow 2.4 m opening for small ships. In 1839 it was replaced with a portal bridge and after that – the swing bridge with a 1.2 m opening for ships that we can see today.
Before the war the bridge turning used to attract crowds of people. The Chain Bridge was used after the war as well. In 2009–2010 it was restored and operates to this day.
In 2010 the city opened a 2.4 m-high bronze sculpture The Black Ghost, created according to the legend of the Black Man from Memel, written down in the late 16th c. by Caspar Hennenberg.