Pont des Arts Lovelocks

2013, Paris
The tradition of love padlocks dates back at least 100 years to a melancholic Serbian tale during World War I. In the spa town of Vrnjačka Banja, a local schoolmistress named Nada fell in love with a Serbian officer named Relja. After they committed to each other, Relja went to war in Greece and fell in love with a local woman from Corfu. Heartbroken, Nada died. To protect their own loves, young women in Vrnjačka Banja began writing their names and their loved ones’ names on padlocks, affixing them to the railings of the bridge where Nada and Relja used to meet. This practice spread across Europe in the early 2000s. In Rome, the ritual of attaching love padlocks to the Ponte Milvio bridge gained popularity after Italian author Federico Moccia featured it in his book "I want You" and its subsequent film adaptation.
The fad caught on in Paris to the extent that all the bridges in the city became affected, to the detriment of the bridges' structural integrity. Padlocks, en masse, weigh a LOT.
Paris started removing padlocks from the Pont des Arts in 2015 and began actively discouraging people from declaring their romantic attachments in this fashion, with the media campaign "No Love Locks".