Officially, the Rio-Antirio bridge is called the “Charilaos Trikoupis” Bridge and is a cable-stayed bridge that was built and put into service in 2004, connecting Rio (a suburb of Patras) and Antirrio, as well as the Peloponnese with western mainland Greece and beyond.
The proposal of creating a bridge between Rio and Antirrio was proposed by Charilaos Trikoupis, a 19th-century Greek prime minister. When Greece was seeking to get a head start on the Industrial Revolution, the idea was too costly.
The 2,880 m (9,449 ft) long Rio-Antirio bridge (about 1.8 miles) greatly improves access to and from the Peloponnese, which was previously only accessible by boat or across the isthmus of Corinth on the island’s extreme east end. It is 28 meters (92 feet) wide, with two lanes in each direction, an emergency lane, and a pedestrian promenade. Its 2,252 m (7,388 ft) long five-span four-pylon cable-stayed part is the world’s second longest cable-stayed deck.
Due to many techniques used to traverse the difficult site, this bridge is often regarded as an engineering masterpiece. Deep water, insecure foundation materials, seismic activity, the possibility of tsunamis, and the extension of the Gulf of Corinth owing to plate tectonics are among the challenges.Several specific engineering difficulties had to be considered due to the straits’ distinctive circumstances. The bottom is primarily loose silt, there is high seismic activity and the likelihood of tectonic movement, and the Gulf of Corinth is expanding at a pace of roughly 30 mm per year. Special construction procedures were used for these reasons.
The huge supporting pylons were built in 2000 after site preparation and dredging began in July 1998. After these were finished in 2003, construction on the traffic decks and supporting cables commenced. Only equipment (sidewalks, railings, etc.) and waterproofing remained to be placed after the main construction was completed on May 21, 2004.
The bridge was finally opened on August 7, 2004, just one week before the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Olympic torchbearers were the first to cross the finish line. Otto Rehhagel, the German football coach who led Greece to the Euro 2004 Championships, was one of them and also Costas Laliotis, the previous Minister of Public Works under whose watch the project had begun.
The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering awarded the bridge the Outstanding Structure Award in 2006. The bridge was featured on Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connections in an episode from 2011.
