The square, as a piece of landscaping, is nothing special (and nothing to do with Wilkinson Eyre, much to their regret) but its location most certainly is. It lies alongside Gateshead’s big cultural idea, the old Baltic flour mill, standing tall on the quayside. This is being converted by architect Dominic Williams to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts, opening next spring. Meanwhile, set high on the banks of the Tyne overlooking both gallery and bridge, tower cranes and emerging foundations mark the site of Gateshead’s new Music Centre, designed by Norman Foster.

The town is fiercely independent. It kicked up a fuss when the controls for the new bridge were going to be sited in foreign territory on the north bank, and insisted they be transferred to the south. It’s their bridge, they press the buttons. But the council knows it needs its rival, Newcastle. There, the once-derelict and virtually inaccessible quayside has turned into a busy docklands-style district with bars, offices, and housing. Gateshead wants some of that, and offers something different. The idea is that Newcastle will want Gateshead’s cultural district just as much as Gateshead wants Newcastle’s wealth and vitality.

Let’s consider the case against this clever bridge. There’s no doubt it makes a big meal of the river crossing, by spinning out the experience just as far as it is possible. Instead of taking you directly from bank to bank, it carries you round in an extravagant sweeping curve, with the cycleway set slightly to one side and below the footway. There was no particular reason why it had to be like this (though Eyre explains that the wide sweep reduces the gradient, and the split-level avoids accidents). The existing old low-level swing bridge just upstream shows that there are more conventional, if less spectacular, ways, to solve this particular problem. Especially as (whisper this) there is so little big river traffic on this part of the Tyne these days that the bridge seldom needs to be raised at all.

There are also far easier ways to make such a device. Easier, that is, than designing a tilted arch suspension structure - all of which has to rotate in one piece to work. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of the cost of the bridge went into the ground on each bank. When you descend into the motor rooms in the great caissons at each side and look at the humming transformers and big electric pumps and quivering hydraulic hoses, it looks like someone has gone to an awful lot of trouble and expense, just to accommodate the odd boat.