Corinth Canal

On this Archaeologous day tour you'll be educated about the amazing history of the engineering marvel, the Corinth Canal that took 2,000 years to complete. 

The first visionary that decided to dig a passageway was the tyrant of Corinth, Periander in 602 BC. The town itself, of Corinth, has a history dating back 7,000 years. At one point, Julius Caesar made Corinth the Roman capital. Many attempts were made, to carve a canal between the narrow isthmus separating the two seas, the Aegean and Adriatic. The goal was to cut off the 185 nautical miles the sailing ships had to waste by going around the Peloponnese.

 However, such a giant project of cutting through massive stone was beyond the technical capabilities of those ancient times. Julius Caesar did carry out another great inventive project. This was the stone road that sthe hips were transferred over on wheeled platforms from one sea to another.

The next try was 300 years later when the King of Macedonia listened to his engineers mistakenly tell him that the Adriatic, thought to be higher, would flood the more southern Aegean Sea. Three more emperors, Julius Caesar, Hadrian, and Caligula were all stopped by the same fear. Afterwards, Emperor Nero (67 CE), with  6,000 slaves, even attempted to construct a canal.  In1830, the first governor of Greece thought about carrying out the project but economic problems postponed it until 1893, when the canal finally was completed by the Andreas Sygross company. Oct 28, 1893.