Engineering Elegance: The Structural Wonder of the Patras Bridge

Copyright „Lovely Day „- Bill Withers The Patras Bridge (Rio-Antirrio Bridge) is located at the strait of Rio-Antirrio The first person to officially cross the Rio-Antirrio Bridge was a torchbearer as part of the Olympic Torch Relay for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. The Rio-Antirrio Bridge is one of the world’s longest multi-span cable-stayed bridges. • It connects the Peloponnese peninsula (Rio) with mainland Greece (Antirrio), near the city of Patras. • Officially opened in August 2004, just before the Athens Olympic Games. • Named after Charilaos Trikoupis, a 19th-century Greek Prime Minister who first proposed the idea • The bridge is about 2,880 meters (1.8 miles) long. • Built in a seismically active region, over deep water with unstable seabed — making it a major engineering challenge. • Special techniques were used to make the structure earthquake- and tsunami-resistant, including floating foundation platforms and flexible pylons.