Paris: Sometimes too much love can be a bad thing - as Paris discovered when thousands of "locks of love" attached to a footbridge caused part of a railing to collapse.

Thousands of lovers from across the world visit the Pont des Arts every year and seal their love by attaching a padlock carrying their names to its railing and throwing the key in the Seine.

But police were forced to hurriedly usher visitors off the footbridge in central Paris early on Sunday evening after 2.4 metres of railing collapsed under the weight of the collected love tokens.

"The bridge was immediately evacuated and closed," local police said.