Rio–Antirrio Bridge
multi-span cable-stayed bridge in Greece
The Rio–Antirrio Bridge (Greek: Γέφυρα Ρίου–Αντιρρίου), officially the Charilaos Trikoupis Bridge, is one of the world's longest multi-span cable-stayed bridges and longest of the fully suspended type. It crosses the Rion Strait between the Gulf of Corinth and Gulf of Patras, linking the town of Rio on the Peloponnese peninsula to Antirrio on mainland Greece by road. It opened one day before the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, on 12 August 2004, and was used to transport the Olympic flame.
Location
The 2,380-metre-long (7,810 ft; 1.48 mi) bridge dramatically improves access to and from the Peloponnese, which could previously be reached only by ferry or via the isthmus of Corinth in the east. Its width is 28 m (92 ft)—it has two vehicle lanes per direction, an emergency lane and a pedestrian walkway. Its five-span four-pylon cable-stayed portion of length 2,252 m (7,388 ft) is the world's third longest cable-stayed deck; only the decks of the Jiaxing-Shaoxing Sea Bridge in Shaoxing, China and the Millau Viaduct in southern France are longer at 10,138 m (33,261 ft) and 2,460 m (8,071 ft), respectively. However, as the former has a shorter length of main span (the length of the main span is the most common way to rank cable-stayed bridges, as the size of the main span does often correlate with the height of the towers, and the engineering complexity involved in designing and constructing the bridge) and as the latter is also supported by bearings at the pylons apart from cable stays, the Rio–Antirrio Bridge deck might be considered the longest cable-stayed "suspended" deck in the world.
This bridge is widely considered to be an engineering masterpiece, owing to several solutions applied to span the difficult site. These difficulties include deep water, insecure materials for foundations, seismic activity, the probability of tsunamis, and the expansion of the Gulf of Corinth due to plate tectonics.
Construction
Charilaos Trikoupis was a 19th-century prime minister of Greece who suggested building a bridge in the current location, but Greece's finances at the time didn't permit its construction.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rio–Antirrio Bridge” is multi-span cable-stayed bridge in Greece. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Antirrio, Bridge and multi-span, not as a finished interpretation.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48353. VIAF identifies the subject as 2685148574264024430009. Authority coordinates are 38.321, 21.773. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rio–Antirrio Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.