According to the legend, the mason who should have built the Ponte della Maddalena, taken by despair at not being able to complete it, evoked Satan. The latter promised to help him complete it in one night, in exchange for the soul of the first living being that would pass through there.
The master builder accepted but, frightened by the promise made to Satan, he ran to the parish priest of the town and - together with him - studied a stratagem to deceive him: he threw a piece of focaccia on the deck, so as to attract a dog (while, according to another version , it would have been the inhabitants of the town who had the inaugural catwalk made not by a dog but by a goat). Angered by the deception, the Devil would have changed the width of the arches in an incongruous way out of spite.