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Your vacations in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean region, and almost completely enclosed by land – on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by the Levant. Technically, the sea is a part of the Atlantic Ocean, although it’s usually identified as a completely separate body of water. The name Mediterranean is derived from the Latin mediterraneanus, meaning "inland" or "in the middle of the earth" (from medius, "middle" and terra, "earth"). It covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km², but its connection to the Atlantic (the Strait of Gibraltar) is only 14 km wide. In oceanography, it’s sometimes called the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea or the European Mediterranean Sea to distinguish it from Mediterranean seas elsewhere.
The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1,500 metres and the deepest recorded point is 5,267 meters in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea.
It was an important route for merchants and travellers of ancient times as it allowed for trade and cultural exchange between emergent peoples of the region – the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Greek, Illyrian, Levantine, Roman, Moorish, Slavic and Turkish cultures. The history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies.
Useful information
The term Mediterranean derives from the Latin word mediterraneus, meaning "in the middle of earth" (medius, "middle" + terra, "land, earth"). This is either due to the sea being surrounded by land (especially compared to the Atlantic Ocean) or that it was at the center of the known world. Twenty-one modern states have a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea
