Corinthian Matters

A Resource for the Study of the Corinthia, Greece

Category: Sites, Kalamaki Bay

Helicopter Rides along the Corinthian Coasts

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A website called tripinview claims to be the world’s first visual travel website, whcih makes available 800,000 photos of 300 hours of video of Mediterranean coastline. You can map and search, build a trip, or take the website’s highlight tours from the air. The site offers extensive coverage of Mediterranean coastal territory including fantastic footage of the Corinthia. Searching via the keyword “Corinthia” turns up 40 different coastal locations that include New Corinth, Kiato, Lechaion, Sikyon, Korphos, Kenchreai, and Loutra Elenis.

If you click on a place, you have the option of scrolling through still shots of the coastline taken from a helicopter perspective, or watching 5-10 minute video sequences of the coast. You can also access information and weather information about each of these places.

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This is a fantastic tool for seeing Greek coastlines from a whole new perspective. For example, on this six minute flight from Loutra Elenis to the Corinth Canal on the Saronic Gulf, you’ll have a completely unique visual perspective of the winding coastline, Mt. Oneion, topography, and a series of archaeological sites. There are excellent views of the submerged harbor of Kenchreai and the Koutsongila Ridge with its Roman-Late Roman cemetery.

tripinview_kenchreai

 

A visual from the cape known as Akra Sophia facing toward Kenchreai and Mt. Oneion. Akra Sophia was the location of Roman to Early Byzantine villa sites published by Timothy Gregory.

tripinview_akrasophia

 

And here’s the helicopter perspective from Akra Sophia facing toward the canal. This marks the beginning of the Isthmus, at least as Greek writers of the classical and Hellenistic age imagined the landscape.

tripinview_saronic_isthmus

On this ten minute flight from the Corinth Canal to Kiato, you’ll see New Corinth and a series of little Corinthian settlements on the Corinthian Gulf. Great images of the external harbor and internal basins at Lechaion, as well as the early Christian basilica there.TripInView_LechaionHarbor

 

Unfortunately no inland footage, so you won’t get a good view of Ancient Corinth except from a distance. Still, this is a great resource. I could imagine showing both of the videos noted above in history or archaeology classes that introduce Corinth’s situation near a connecting Isthmus.

Thanks to Dimitri Nakassis for the tip about this site.

Glider Flights over the Isthmus

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The revolution of YouTube and video sharing has ushered in a whole new world of viewing the Corinthia.  Already hundreds of videos can be found online related to the site of ancient Corinth—too many, in fact, to be useful to a person interested in ancient Corinth.  I plan at some point to do a series of highlight posts that feature the most useful gems among the noise. 

The two videos below, which showed up in my Google Alerts this morning, provide low-altitude video footage of the Isthmus.  The first begins near the canal on the Corinthian Gulf, flies over Loutraki, then Mt. Gerania along the coastal road that leads to Perachora, and ends with a flight over the canal approaching the Saronic Gulf.  You cannot make out Isthmia in the video, but there are fantastic views of the Corinthian Gulf and Kalamaki Bay, a point of arrival for ancient visitors to Isthmia. 

Sweet glider video over the Isthmus

The second video shows a flight over the Corinth canal.  At the end of the video, as the glider approaches the Corinthian Gulf, you can see the path of the diolkos running through a clump of pine trees on the right side of the canal.  This is the inaccessible part of the diolkos through the Greek Military Engineers’ School ground.  You can also see the Peloponnesian section of diolkos on the left side of the canal. 

Direct flight over the Corinth Canal.