AbstractAn optical fibre sensor for bridge monitoring is presented. It pursues the sensing of heavy traffic loads, and in particular vibration monitoring.A simpleintensitydevice is conceived; it is calibrated under laboratory static loading.The paper reports and discusses the results of dynamic tests aimed at measuring the oscillations of a steel bar whose bottom end is fixed to a shaking‐table. The table is driven by a hydraulic actuator capable of providing an assigned horizontal movement of different amplitude and frequency conten