Antilles, a chain of tropical islands, extending in a long arc that separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. From off the tip of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, the Antilles sweep generally southeastward from Cuba to beyond Puerto Rico. East of the Virgin Islands they turn southward and then abruptly westward, running almost parallel to the coast of Venezuela. The Antilles include all of the islands of the West Indies, except the Bahama Islands. Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (occupied by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico are the largest of the islands and form the Greater Antilles. The rest of the islands form the Lesser Antilles. They are the Leeward and Windward groups, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the islands off the Venezuelan coast.