In 1578, Henry III of France did something radical, he ordered the construction of Paris’ first stone bridge. Limestone was ferried down the Seine from the quarries of Saint-Maximin and though Catholic and Protestant conflict would delay the project, by 1607 the French capital had its first vehicle-ready, fireproof bridge: Pont Neuf.

More than four centuries on, French artist JR will take the city’s oldest bridge back upstream by wrapping it in images of the large rock formations from which it was sourced. For three weeks in June 2026, Pont Neuf will briefly become a grotto in the heart of Paris, following up Retour à la Caverne which JR installed on the façade of the Paris Opera in 2023. The goal, JR said, is no less than renewing the way Parisians look at the world around them.

JR, Projet Pont-Neuf (collage préparatoire) (2025). Photo: Courtesy Atelier JR. © 2025 JR.

La Caverne du Pont Neuf marks the 40th anniversary of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s project that wrapped Pont Neuf in 450,000-square-feet of silky golden-brown fabric. Well, 41st anniversary: it was originally due to open this year, but logistical and technical complications saw it pushed back. This is fitting. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s large-scale installations were famously tardy, as was the case for The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1985), which required eight miles of rope, 300 specialized workers, and the best part of a decade to gain the approval of Paris’s mayor, Jacques Chirac.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1975–85). Photo: courtesy Wolfgang Volz.

This time, French authorities have needed little convincing with the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo, calling it a “gift to Paris” that revives Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artistic gesture through JR’s equally capacious practice. Hidalgo, who was 26-years old at the time, recalled the wrapping fondly. “I observed this impressive artwork from afar, before approaching and finally walking through this metamorphosed monument,” she said in a statement. “It was an unforgettable moment of poetry and beauty.”

JR, by contrast, was only two when the Pont Neuf was last wrapped, but is in some ways a natural inheritor of the spirit of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s grand and public-facing work. JR’s projects are typically larger-than-life and humanistic: he has pasted a giant toddler overlooking the U.S.-Mexico Border, wrapped Kenyan trains with the eyes of marginalized women, and involved more than 600,000 people in his Inside Out public art project.

JR, GIANTS, Kikito, September 7, 2017, 10:03 am, Tecate (2017), a 65-foot photo of a Mexican child erected overlooking the border fence between the US and Mexico. Photo courtesy of Perrotin.

This universal appeal and approach led the director of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, their nephew Vladimir Yavachev, to offer the project to JR. In 2021, Yavachev oversaw the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe, which Christo had been planning at the time of his death in 2020, but here he wanted an interpretation rather than a reinstallation. JR, who became friends with Christo, was only too happy to oblige.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude at The Pont Neuf Wrapped Paris in 1985. Photo: Wolfgang Volz. © 1985 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation.

“My vision for this project is rooted in both the past and present of this iconic bridge,” JR said. “I once was also very inspired by the artistic vision of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and I share their idea that the mission of art is to make the public think.”

JR’s La Caverne du Pont Neuf joins a host of major projects and exhibitions that have been timed to coincide with the 90th anniversary of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s births—they were both born on June 13, 1935. These have included an illumination at Berlin’s Reichstag which pays tribute to their 1995 work, an augmented reality recreation of The Gates that placed more than 7,500 metal frames draped in orange in New York’s Central Park, and a major exhibition of their work at the Würth Museum in Germany.

“JR: La Caverne du Pont Neuf” will be on view at Pont Neuf, Paris, France, June 6–28, 2026.