Egnatia Odos AE, 1995 - 2008
Egnatia Odos Motorway
Greece
The Egnatia Odos Motorway spans time and geography. The Romans built, or at least mapped, a roadway they called the Via Egnatia in the 2nd century B.C. The route carried information and goods across the Baltics, connecting Europe to Asia Minor. As part of the European Union's planned Trans-European Road Network, the historic trade route is being rebuilt with 21st-century engineering at a cost of over $4 billion.
The 422-mile road will run from the Igoumenitsa on the Adriatic to the village of Kipi on the Turkish border, passing through 76 tunnels and over 1,650 bridges along the way. (For distance freaks, that amounts to 62 miles of tunnels and 25 miles of bridges.) All of those overs and unders have been engineered to last in light of the fact that Greece has more seismic activity than any other country in Europe. Plus, the road winds around four protected wetlands, 70 wildlife conservation sites, and 250 historic sites and monuments. Taken as individual engineering projects, the road segments and bridges and tunnels are fairly standard. But taken as a whole that the Egnatia Odos is wondrous.