The making of La Caverne du Pont Neuf

JR’s vision was inspired by the quarries from which the bridge’s stones were extracted. The artwork juxtaposes the raw and wild with the refined elegance of the City of Light, creating a dialogue between the past and the present.

The Pont Neuf, which translates to “New Bridge,” was completed in 1607 and was the first bridge in Paris built entirely of Lutetian limestone. The bridge’s limestone, used to build many of Paris’ buildings and landmarks, was sourced from quarries in the Paris Basin. It was also the first bridge in the city that included paved sidewalks, facilitating pedestrian use and Parisian street life.

La Caverne du Pont Neuf pays tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Pont Neuf Wrapped, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025.

From the start, JR and the team opted for an inflatable structure, inspired by projects, both completed and unfinished, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, such as 5,600 Cubicmeter Package (Kassel, Germany, 1967-68), 42,390 Cubic Feet Package (Minneapolis, USA, 1968), and The Walk (Project for Doha, 2017), an unrealized inflatable walkway.

“I admire the legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and I share their idea that the mission of art is to make us think, to question what is familiar to us. The debate that a public art project can provoke is of equal value to its realization. Art is a transformation, and a way of renewing the way we look at the world around us. Through the dream of La Caverne du Pont Neuf, this is what I hope to make possible in Paris”. —JR

From suppliers to workers, production teams to engineers, 800 people will contribute to the artwork's success. Leading the effort is Air Toiles Concept, the firm responsible for conceiving and installing the artwork. For several months, this artisan company with thirty years of experience has been working in Plougoumelen (Morbihan) to design and build the technical architectural system that will transform the bridge into a cavern. Its role is multifaceted, encompassing the engineering, construction, and assembly of both the main inflatable structure and the interior tunnel of La Caverne.

Air Toiles Concept is also responsible for printing the fabric that will cover the structure and the bridge, and for developing and implementing the overall safety systems for the installation.

For over a year, JR, in coordination with the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation and L'Amicale des Ponts de Paris, has been thoughtfully planning and working with the support of the City of Paris to ensure the success of La Caverne du Pont Neuf. In January 2026, preparations took a major turn with a large-scale testing phase, made possible by the provision of a venue suited to the project: a historic hangar at Orly Airport (Paris Aéroport), which was used for aircraft maintenance several decades ago.

La Caverne du Pont Neuf covers 2,400 square meters of floor space, measuring 120 meters long and 20 meters wide, with the highest points of the structure ranging from 12 to 18 meters in height. Air is the main component of the artwork.

For JR, La Caverne du Pont Neuf is a crowning moment in an artistic cycle that began in 2020, during which he has continually questioned the growing disconnection and isolation among citizens, particularly exacerbated by the pandemic and the successive lockdowns. It is in this spirit that JR has created several trompe-l'oeil artworks, creating breaches in the facades of iconic buildings, with La Ferita in Florence (2021), Punto de Fuga in Rome (2021), and La Nascita in Milan (2024).

This approach also inspired the creation of Retour à la Caverne (Return to the Cave) on the facade of the Paris Opera (2023). The Palais Garnier installation encouraged viewers to return to a romanticism inspired by the natural world. The cave beckoned viewers to peer inside, invoking Plato's allegory —a place where the exit leads to knowledge and an understanding of the world. 

The two acts of Retour à la Caverne, which ultimately came to life in a performance involving 153 dancers, are the prelude to what La Caverne du Pont Neuf will conclude. With the transformation of the iconic bridge into a cave, JR aims to accompany a movement inviting citizens to abandon blindness and isolationism in favor of lucidity, togetherness, and concord among all.

Following their collaboration on Retour à la Caverne - Act II, Chiroptera (facade of the Opéra Garnier, Paris, 2023), together with Damien Jalet, and on the occasion of the exhibition Dans la lumière (Perrotin, Paris, 2024), JR asked Thomas Bangalter, former member of the duo Daft Punk, to participate in the project by inviting him to imagine the sound dimension within.

As an acoustic plastic artist, Thomas Bangalter therefore sought to envelop La Caverne in a unique fabric that would be sonic without actually being music. Through a conceptual and radical approach, he has since conceived a texture that is both minimal and maximal, in line with the rest of the work of art.

For the first time, JR will also explore the field of olfaction to create a fully immersive installation. This innovative project is being developed in collaboration with Sarah Bouasse, a journalist and author committed to restoring the sense of smell to its rightful place in our relationship with the world. Sarah Bouasse is the curator of the olfactory experience of La Caverne du Pont Neuf. In partnership with the perfume house Odore Scola, she has set out to infuse a narrative and emotional charge into an essential component of this installation: the air.

JR has partnered with Snap Inc.'s AR Studio Paris to create Echoes, a visual experience that extends beyond what the eye can ordinarily perceive. Free to access on mobile devices or through Snap's augmented reality spectacles, the experience transforms crossing the Pont Neuf into a singular sensory encounter that visitors activate at will. Snap Spectacles can be reserved online, with limited walk-in sessions available on site daily. Guided in groups of five, each visit becomes its own.

Months of concept and prototype development went into transposing JR's work into augmented reality, exploring how AR can reveal new dimensions in which bodies, animals, light and sound unfold through space. Through heightened visual perception, invisible gestures become persistent traces, echoes of a presence suspended in time. Between shadow and lingering effect, La Caverne unveils hidden facets of reality, where perception shifts, and the visible becomes merely a fragment.

In May 2026, the team worked day and night for two weeks on the Pont Neuf, laying the printed fabrics, securing the straps, and ensuring the monument's full protection. At midnight on May 20, 2026, everything was in place. Within the hour, 80 structural canvas arches filled with air and rose into their final form.

In mid-June 2026, France TV will broadcast La Caverne du Pont-Neuf, a sixty-minute authored documentary directed by Vincent Lorca and produced by Together Media in co-production with Social Animals. Vincent Lorca follows the collective challenge of creating this ephemeral yet monumental work: from the Saint-Maximin quarry, to the hangars at Orly Airport, through the Hôtel de Ville and the banks of the river Seine. The result is an ensemble documentary that follows the daily reality of all those who make the impossible possible: artists, technicians, engineers, elected officials, law enforcement, residents of the 1st arrondissement of Paris and schoolchildren.