The Corinth Canal

Seen from the bridge above, the Corinth Canal looks impossibly narrow: a straight blue ribbon at the bottom of limestone walls that rise as high as about 80 meters above the water. Cut through the Isthmus of Corinth between 1881 and 1893, it links the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, sparing ships the long voyage around the Peloponnese and its stormy southern capes. Rulers from Periander to Nero imagined such a cut for more than two thousand years. Today it is too small for most modern cargo ships, but more than 11,000 yachts, cruise boats and small vessels pass through in a typical year, and visitors bungee jump from one of its bridges.

The canal runs dead straight for about 6.4 kilometers across the isthmus that joins the Peloponnese to mainland Greece. It is only about 24.6 meters wide at the waterline and 21.3 meters at the bottom, with a water depth of about 8 meters, which limits it to ships of roughly 17 meters beam and modest draft. Vessels pass one way at a time, and larger ones are towed by tugs. Road and rail bridges span the cut, and at each end submersible bridges at Isthmia and Posidonia sink to the canal floor to let ships pass. Near the western end lie remains of the diolkos, a paved trackway on which ancient Greeks hauled ships overland across the isthmus from about the 6th century BCE. The canal is run by Corinth Canal S.A.

Periander, tyrant of Corinth around 600 BCE, is said to have considered a canal, and the Roman emperor Nero broke ground in 67 CE with thousands of laborers before the work was abandoned. The modern canal was begun by a French company in 1881 and completed by a Greek company in 1893. Its steep, faulted walls have been its weakness, and landslides and erosion have repeatedly forced it to close. After a landslide in January 2021 it was shut for long stretches while slopes were stabilized, and it closed again on October 14, 2025 for restoration works before reopening to shipping on June 17, 2026. The operator says further restoration is planned. With its narrow dimensions the canal now serves mainly tourism, yachts and small coastal vessels rather than global trade.

• The Kiel Canal
  Germany's shortcut across the base of the Jutland Peninsula, linking the North Sea to the Baltic another European ship canal
• The Suez Canal
  Egypt's sea-level shortcut between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, still recovering from the Red Sea crisis another sea-level canal
• Aegean Sea
  The island-strewn sea where Greek civilization was born connects to
• The Roman Empire
  The Mediterranean state whose roads, law and Latin still shape three continents first attempted under
• Greece
  The cradle of Western civilization, scattered across the Aegean and Ionian seas located in
• Athens
  Greece's capital, the cradle of Western civilization near