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PATRA - RIO
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Patras
is Greece's third largest urban centre and the capital of the prefecture of Achaea, located in
northern Peloponnese,
215 kilometers west of Athens. The city is built at the foothills of Mount Panachaikon,
overlooking the Gulf of Patras.
Every spring, the city hosts one of
Europe's largest and most colorful carnivals; notable features of the Patras
Carnival include its mammoth-sized satirical floats and extravagant balls
and parades, enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of visitors in a pleasant
Mediterranean climate, with relatively cool yet humid summers and rather
mild winters. |
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The Rio-Antirrio bridge , officially
the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge after the statesman who first envisioned it,
is a cable-stayed bridge crossing the Gulf of Corinth near Patras, linking
the town of Rio on the Peloponnesus to Antirrio on mainland Greece. |
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The
2,880 m (9,449 ft) long bridge dramatically improves access to and from
the Peloponnesus, which could previously be reached only by ferry or via
the isthmus of Corinth at its extreme east end. Its width is 28 m (92 ft)
it has two vehicle lanes per direction, an emergency lane and a pedestrian
walkway |
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| Its five-span
four-pylon cable-stayed portion of length 2,252 m (7,388 ft) is the
world's second longest cable-stayed deck; only the deck of the Millau
Viaduct is longer at 2,460 m (8,071 ft). However, 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. 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. |
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The bridge was finally inaugurated on August
7, 2004, a week before the opening of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens -- and
the Olympic torchbearers were the first to officially cross its length.
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