The Corinth Canal is one of the most beautiful civil works of humanity. It is an artificial waterway built in Greece and inaugurated in 1893 that aims to connect the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea. This Canal is used only by small boats because of its width and depth. The Corinth Canal is located in the Isthmus of Corinth,
which is a 6 km (3.7 mi) wide piece of land that joins the Peloponnesian peninsula with mainland Greece. Because the Corinth Canal crosses the Isthmus from side to side, it separates both Greek regions. The Corinth Canal is very important for the Greek economy because it allows direct transit between the Aegean Sea and the Gulf of Corinth.
Despite the fact that the Corinth Greece canal was built just over 100 years ago, the idea behind its construction is thousands of years old. The idea was always to dig the ground to form the canal, however, the technology of the time did not make it possible. The first attempts occurred in the 7th century B.C.E. thanks to Periander, a governor of Corinth who belonged to a dynasty of tyrants.
That tyrant had the idea of digging the canal but when he saw that task impossible due to technical difficulties, he decided to build a ramp so that boats could cross the Isthmus by land, with a practice called portage.
Periander called that road Diolkos. The Macedonian king Demetrius I also thought about building the canal during his short reign (294-288 B.C.E.) but abandoned his plans because of the lack of technology to face future floods.
When the area was conquered by the Roman Empire, they also had plans to build a canal. Julius Caesar had the idea of building the canal when he founded the Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis in the year 44, but he could not materialize his intentions to build the canal,
since he was assassinated before starting it. The first emperor to take action for the construction of the Corinth Canal was Nero in the year 67 C.E. Nero died in the year 68 so he never saw the canal finished, and his successor Servius Sulpicius Galba, canceled the project because he thought it was too expensive.
