The Ponte della Maddalena is commonly identified as the “Devil’s Bridge”. Like many other enterprises that seemed impossible to the contemporaries, popular legend attributes the construction to the devil, who is then cheated in various ways. The legend tells of the chief mason engaged in the construction of the bridge who was very worried about the delay accumulated in the same work, given the continuous and impetuous floods of the river. One evening in despair he began to pronounce sacrileges such as to evoke Satan. Then the Devil told the master builder that he would complete the work himself in one night in exchange for the first soul to cross the bridge. The chief mason accepted and the construction was completed. The master builder, desperate for the imminence of the heavy tribute to the Devil, ran to the parish priest of the town, who, after hearing the confession, devised a stratagem: he made a dog cross the bridge, the Devil furious at the shrewd gesture took him and he threw in the waters of the river without ever being seen again. It is also said that the dog, an all-white Maremma shepherd, occasionally sees himself walking on the bridge in the last evenings of October representing the devil who still seeks the soul of the foreman. It is also said to be able to observe the petrified body of the poor animal on the bottom of the river.
Similar legends are told for other bridges such as the Gobbo Bridge over the Trebbia river in the town of Bobbio or the Puente del Diablo in Martorell in Spain.
There are other versions that speak of a pig chasing an apple in which the evil one, angered by the mockery suffered, threw himself into the Serchio, thus opening a passage with the underworld triggering a pandemonium such as to leave marks on the bottom of the river and in the mind of the inhabitants .
Another fact that would bring a further justification to the name it bears is the story of Lucida Mansi. The noblewoman from Lucca was beautiful, strong, powerful, rich and young with a tremendous fear of old age. She did everything to avoid advancing age: alchemy, journeys in search of essays, mystical sources and more so as not to grow old. One morning, in his residence in Monsagrati in Pescaglia, he discovered that a slight wrinkle had appeared on his face. In desperation he began to cry and scream. On the evening of that same day Lucida (or Lucilla) while nervously wandering the streets of Borgo a Mozzano, passed by the Ponte della Maddalena (then still well known) where she had a meeting with a beautiful boy who offered her thirty years of youth in exchange for your soul. The wretched accepted. So Lucida was taken by the young man to the highest point of the bridge, at which point the boy took on the appearance of Lucifer and detached the noblewoman’s soul from her body, throwing it into the Serchio.
[text taken from Wikipedia]
