With its solid foundation and a grand view, the structure features a completely reasonable design and ingenious construction techniques. The bridge's opening is not shaped like an ordinary semicircle but looks more like a bow, and its surface is even and wide, paying attention to both land and water transportation. This form is called "level arch".

The stone arch was built by vertically juxtaposing 28 arch rings, each 34 cm wide and capable of standing erect by itself, which facilitates the construction work and independent repairs. The large level arch, which exerts great force on the bridge's abutment, was difficult to build. While, the bridge abutment is a small and shallow ordinary rectangle with a thickness of only 1.529 meters and piled up with five layers of stones, the groundwork is made of clay with a low carrying capacity. Such a large, stone-arched bridge, built on such groundwork and with such a small bridge abutment, is rarely seen in the world.

The greatest scientific contribution by the Zhaozhou Bridge is the "open-spandrel bridge." On the two sides of the central arch are four paratactic small arches, which not only expand the water-discharge channel and preserve the stone materials, but also reduce the weight of the bridge and increase the stability of the bridge body. Due to this ingenious architectural design, the Zhaozhou Bridge has withstood numerous floods, eight big earthquakes and the weight of traffic over more than 1,400 years.

Spanning over the Xiaohe River, the bridge looks like a big rainbow. The four small arches along the central arch resemble four huge jade rings. The bridge's balustrades are beautifully decorated with dragons and other mythical creatures, which suggests that ancient people tried to shelter the structure from floods and other natural disasters.

 Historical significance

The Zhaozhou Bridge is the oldest stone-arched bridge in China and the oldest open-spandrel bridge in the world. Its two open arches that flank the spandrel reduce the pressure on the spandrel and allow floodwater to pass. The "open-spandrel" technique is a great innovation in the world's history of bridge engineering. Some 1,200 years later, in 1883, the French finally built an open-spandrel bridge across the Yage River, which preceded big-span open-spandrel-bridge construction in Europe. Western scholars admit that the open-spandrel architecture of Zhaozhou Bridge is the predecessor of many modern structures made of reinforced concrete, ushering in a new style in bridge design.

The bridge was technologically the most advanced in the world during the Sui Dynasty. It was a remarkable achievement in the history of ancient Chinese civilization, turning over a new leaf in the annals of bridge construction history.

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