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L'incidente è successo sul ponte.

L'incidente è successo sul ponte.
The accident happened on the bridge.
From Lesson 70:The passato prossimo with essere (sono andato)·Italian

Questions & Answers about L'incidente è successo sul ponte.

Why does this sentence use è instead of ha for the past tense?
In Italian, the past tense uses essere (to be) as the helping verb for verbs of motion, state of being, or events. Succedere (to happen) describes an event, so it takes essere. That's why we say è successo instead of ha successo.
Does the ending of successo change depending on what happened?
Yes! When you use essere as the helping verb, the past participle (here, successo) must agree in gender and number with the subject. Since l'incidente is a masculine singular noun, the participle ends in -o. If a feminine thing had happened, it would be è successa.
Where does the word sul come from?
Sul is a combined word made by merging the preposition su (on) and the definite article il (the). We use il because the next word, ponte (bridge), is a masculine singular noun starting with a consonant.
How do I know if a noun ending in -e like ponte is masculine or feminine?
Nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine, so you usually have to memorize their gender. In this sentence, the word sul gives you a hint: because it contains il (the masculine "the"), you know that ponte must be masculine.

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