The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus (Greek: Πελοπόννησος Peloponnesos; see also List of Greek place names) is a large peninsula in southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth. The peninsula is divided among two distinct peripheries of Greece, the Peloponnese and the West Greece peripheriesThe Peloponnese covers an area of some 21,549 km² (8,320 square miles), and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. While technically it might 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).