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The Peloponnese or Peloponesus is a large peninsula in southern Greece,
forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth.
The peninsula is divided among three distinct peripheries of modern Greece:
most of the Peloponnese and parts of the West Greece and Attica peripheries.
The Peloponnese covers an area of some 21,549 kmē (8,320 square miles),
and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece.
While technically it may be considered an island since the construction
of the Corinth Canal in 1893, like other peninsulas that have been separated
from their mainland by man-made bodies of waters, it is rarely, if ever referred to
as an "island". It has two land connections with the rest of Greece, a natural one
at the Isthmus of Corinth and an artificial one in the shape of the Rio-Antirio bridge (completed 2004).
The peninsula has a mountainous interior and deeply indented coasts, with Mount Taygetus its highest point.
It possesses four south-pointing peninsulas, Messenia, the Mani Peninsula, Cape Malea (also known as Epidaurus Limera),
and the Argolid in the far northeast of the Peloponnese.
Two groups of islands lie off the Peloponnesan coast: the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east,
and the Ionian Islands to the west. The island of Kythira,
off the Epidaurus Limera peninsula to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands.
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