On September 22, 1985, a group of 300 professional workers completed the temporary work of art The Pont Neuf Wrapped. They had deployed 41,000 square meters of woven polyamide fabric, silky in appearance and golden sandstone in color, covering:

- The sides and vaults of the twelve arches, without obstructing river traffic.
- The parapets down to the ground.
- The sidewalks and curbs (pedestrians walked on the fabric).
- All the street lamps on both sides of the bridge.
- The vertical part of the embankment of the western tip of the Île de la Cité.
- The Esplanade du Vert-Galant.

The fabric was held in place by 13 kilometers of rope and secured by 12.1 tons of steel chains surrounding the base of each tower, 1 meter underwater.

The Charpentiers de Paris led by Gérard Moulin, along with French subcontractors, were assisted by American engineers who had worked on previous Christo and Jeanne-Claude projects under the direction of Theodore Dougherty: Vahé Aprahamian, August L. Huber, James Fuller, John Thomson, and Dimiter Zagoroff. Johannes Schaub, the project director, had submitted the working method and detailed plans and received project approval from the authorities of the City of Paris, the Department of the Seine, and the State. 600 monitors, in teams of 40 led by Simon Chaput, worked 24 hours a day to maintain the project and give instructions, until the removal of the project on October 7.

All expenses for The Pont Neuf Wrapped were borne by the artists, as in their other projects, through the sale of preparatory drawings and collages, as well as earlier works. The artists do not accept any sponsorship.

Begun under Henry III, the Pont-Neuf was completed in July 1606, during the reign of Henry IV. No other bridge in Paris offers such topographical and visual variety, today as in the past. From 1578 to 1890, the Pont-Neuf underwent continuous changes and the most extravagant additions, such as the construction of shops on the bridge under Soufflot, and the building, demolition, rebuilding, and demolition of the massive rococo structure that housed the Samaritaine water pump.

Wrapping the Pont-Neuf continued this tradition of successive metamorphoses through a new sculptural dimension and transformed it, for 14 days, into a work of art. The ropes held the fabric to the surface of the bridge and maintained the main shapes, accentuating the relief while underlining the proportions and details of the Pont-Neuf, which joins the Left and Right Banks and the Île de la Cité, the heart of Paris for over 400 years.

(Text extracted from the website Christo & Jeanne-Claude))

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