It might sound like a romantic gesture—securing a padlock engraved with your paramour’s name to a bridge and throwing the key into the water—but today it’s unlikely to be a lasting declaration. In 2014, there were enough padlocks fastened to Paris’ Pont des Arts to cause a railing to collapse, leading to the removal of an estimated one million locks and the installation of plexiglass to prevent more from being added. Similarly, on the Brooklyn Bridge, municipal workers and volunteers now patrol the famous walkway with angle grinders. What was once a charming custom—a symbol of unbreakable connection—has buckled under the weight of mass tourism. 

The practice is thought to have begun in Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia in 1914, when a teacher named Nada became engaged to an officer named Relja. They would meet one another on Most Ljubavi, the Bridge of Love, but when the First World War broke out, Relja was deployed overseas and never returned; Nada is said to have died of grief. Moved by her story, local women began writing their names and their lovers’ on padlocks, fastening them to the railings of Most Ljubavi and throwing the keys in the river below.

The practice remained largely forgotten until 2006, when the protagonist of Italian novelist Federico Moccia’s I Want You declared his eternal love by securing a padlock to a lamppost on Ponte Milvio in Rome. Shortly after its publication, love locks started appearing on the real-life bridge, and the tradition spread across Italy and the wider world.

Moccia believes the popularity of love locks was due to a lack of opportunities for young people to express their feelings; a padlock, he suggested, is “a promise.” But while the future of the practice looks uncertain, some innovative solutions have emerged. On the Luzhkov Bridge in Moscow, officials installed dedicated “lock trees” that provide a more structurally sound home for love locks. Virtual love locks are also available online, as are, for a fee, NFTs of some 37,000 love locks that were photographed before their removal from the Pont des Arts. If the tradition now feels diminished, it may be because the fantasy at its center has become harder to sustain: the idea that love can be fixed permanently in place, unchanged by time, repetition or reality.