Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is the largest bridge spanning over the Yangtze River after Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge and Chongqing Baishatuo Yangtze River Bridge, initiating a new era of independent design and construction on major bridges. The railway bridge is 6772m long and the highway bridge is 4588m long. Ships with million tons loading are able to go through the bridge.

With construction commenced on January 18^th, 1960, the railway bridge was come into service in September 1968. Meanwhile, the highway bridge was put into use in December of the same year. Since then, Tientsin-Pukow Railway and Shanghai-Nanking Railway have been officially connected. And Beijing-Shanghai Railway has been linked up, providing direct access from Beijing to Shanghai. The upper-deck of the bridge is 19.5m wide highway bridge, composing of a main bridge of 1577m and an approach bridge of 3012m, designed for 4 trucks running parallel at the same time. The lower-deck of the bridge is 6772m long and 14m wide double-track railway bridge for two trains to run from the opposite directions at the same time. There are 22 ethnically characteristic bridge openings in the grounding parts on both ends. The superstructure of the main bridge is triple-module continuous steel truss girder in 3x160m and one-opening 128m tube-support steel truss girder.

The bridge adopts heavy drilled caisson, steel drilled caisson with tubular columns, floating drilled caisson and steel sheeting cofferdam. The artificial diving operation in foundation construction reaches as deep as 70m underwater, setting a new record of artificial diving operation in China’s bridge foundation construction. Designed and constructed by Chinese people with all domestically made materials, the bridge was recognized as a great achievement of socialist construction and has been recorded in Resolutions for Certain Historical Issues of the CPC Since the Establishment of the PRC in 1981. The bridge is awarded with Special Prize of the National Award for Progress in Science and Technology and one of the Top 100 Classic Construction Projects by the 60 anniversary of the establishment of PRC.