Aegean Sea in the context of "Santorini"

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean basin, spanning thousands of islands and nine traditional geographic regions. It has a population of over 10 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki, Patras and Heraclion.

Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation and the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, theatre, and the Olympic Games. The Ancient Greeks were organised into independent city-states, or poleis (singular polis), that spanned the Mediterranean and Black seas. Philip II of Macedon united most of present-day Greece in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great conquering much of the known ancient world from the Near East to northwestern India. The subsequent Hellenistic period saw the height of Greek culture and influence in antiquity. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC and became an integral part of the Roman Empire and its continuation, the Byzantine Empire, where Greek culture and language were dominant. The Greek Orthodox Church, which emerged in the first century AD, helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox world.

Greeks or Hellenes (/ˈhɛliːnz/; Greek: Έλληνες, Éllines [ˈelines]) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Anatolia, parts of Italy and Egypt, and to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea. They also form a significant diaspora (omogenia), with many Greek communities established around the world.

Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people themselves have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age. Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt, the Balkans, Cyprus, and Constantinople. Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Constantinople at various periods.

Thessaloniki (/ˌθɛsələˈniːki/; Greek: Θεσσαλονίκη [θesaloˈnici] ; also known by various spellings and names) is a city in northern Greece. The nation's second-largest, with slightly over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, it is the capital of the geographic region of Macedonia, the administrative region of Central Macedonia and the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace. It is also known in Greek as i Symprotévousa, literally "the co-capital", a reference to its historical status as the "co-reigning" city (Symvasilévousa) of the Byzantine Empire alongside Constantinople.

Thessaloniki is located on the Thermaic Gulf, at the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. It is bounded on the west by the delta of the Axios. The municipality of Thessaloniki, the historical centre, had a population of 319,045 in 2021, while the Thessaloniki metropolitan area had 1,006,112 inhabitants and the greater region had 1,092,919. It is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and political centre, and a major transportation hub for Greece and southeastern Europe, notably through the Port of Thessaloniki. The city is renowned for its festivals, events and vibrant cultural life in general. Events such as the Thessaloniki International Fair and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival are held annually. Thessaloniki was the 2014 European Youth Capital. The city's main university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and the Balkans.

The Balkans (/ˈbɔːlkənz/ BAWL-kənz, /ˈbɒlkənz/ BOL-kənz), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.

The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of southeastern Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. In the 19th century the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia, the parts of Europe that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, which was further promoted during the creation of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan Peninsula's natural borders does not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula; hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan Peninsula, while historical scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization. The region may alternatively be referred to as Southeast Europe.

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; and the Aegean Sea, Greece, and Bulgaria to the west. Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city. Istanbul is its largest city and economic center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.

First inhabited by modern humans during the Late Paleolithic, present-day Turkey was home to various ancient peoples. The Hattians were assimilated by the Hittites and other Anatolian peoples. Classical Anatolia transitioned into cultural Hellenization after Alexander the Great's conquests, and later Romanization during the Roman and Byzantine eras. The Seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in the 11th century, starting the Turkification process. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into Turkish principalities. Beginning in 1299, the Ottomans united the principalities and expanded. Mehmed II conquered Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1453. During the reigns of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire became a global power. From 1789 onwards, the empire saw major changes, reforms, centralization, and rising nationalism while its territory declined.

Greece is a country in Southeastern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. It is bordered to the north by Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria; to the east by Turkey, and is surrounded to the east by the Aegean Sea, to the south by the Cretan and the Libyan seas, and to the west by the Ionian Sea which separates Greece from Italy.

The country consists of an extremely rough, mountainous, peninsular mainland jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea at the southernmost tip of the Balkans, and two smaller peninsulas projecting from it:the Chalkidiki and the Peloponnese, which is joined to the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth. Greece also has many islands, of various sizes, the largest being Crete, Euboea, Lesvos, Rhodes, Chios, Kefalonia, and Corfu; groups of smaller islands include the Dodecanese and the Cyclades. According to the CIA World Factbook, Greece has 13,676 kilometres (8,498 mi) of coastline, the largest in the Mediterranean Basin.

The Sea of Crete (Greek: Κρητικό Πέλαγος, Kritiko Pelagos), or Cretan Sea, is a sea, part of the Aegean Sea, located in its southern extremity, with a total surface area of 45,000 km (17,000 sq mi). The sea stretches to the north of the island of Crete, east of the islands of Kythera and Antikythera, south of the Cyclades, and west of the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes, Karpathos and Kassos. The bounding sea to the west is the Ionian Sea. To the northwest is the Myrtoan Sea, a subdivision of the Mediterranean Sea that lies between the Cyclades and Peloponnese. To the east-southeast is the rest of the Mediterranean Sea, sometimes credited as the Levantine Sea. Across the island of Crete, to the opposite shore of it begins the Libyan Sea. Ferry routes to and from Piraeus and Heraklion, as well as the southern islands of the Aegean and the Dodecanese, run in this area.

Just off the coastline of Northeastern Crete, the sea reaches a maximum depth of near 3,293 m (10,000 ft). Other sources (maps) show a maximum depth of 2,591 m (8,500 ft).

The Mediterranean Sea (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən) is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa. To its west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa by only 14 km (9 mi); additionally, it is connected to the Black Sea through the Bosporus strait that intersects Turkey in the northeast and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal in the southeast.

The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi), representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface; it includes fifteen marginal seas, including the Aegean, Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Marmara. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.

Greece has many islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000, depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227.

The largest Greek island by both area and population is Crete, located at the southern edge of the Aegean Sea. The second largest island in area is Euboea or Evvia, which is separated from the mainland by the 60 m wide Euripus Strait, and is administered as part of the Central Greece region. After the third and fourth largest Greek islands, Lesbos and Rhodes, the rest of the islands are two-thirds of the area of Rhodes, or smaller.

Attica (Greek: Αττική, romanised: Attikí, Greek pronunciation: [atiˈci]; Ancient Greek: Ἀττική, romanised: Attikḗ, Ancient Greek pronunciation: [atːikɛ̌ː]), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area, which consists of the city of Athens, the capital of Greece and the core city of the metropolitan area, as well as its surrounding suburban cities and towns. It is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean Sea, bordering on Boeotia to the north and Megaris to the west. The mines of Laurion were an important mining region located at Lavrio, on the southern tip of the peninsula.

The history of Attica is closely linked with that of Athens. In ancient times, Attica corresponded with the classical Athens city‑state. It was the most prominent region in Ancient Greece, specifically during the Golden Age of Athens in the classical period. Ancient Attica was divided into demoi, or municipalities, from the reform of Cleisthenes in 508/7 BC, grouped into three zones: urban (astu) in the region of Athens main town, and Piraeus (the port), coastal (paralia) along the coastline, and inland (mesogeia) in the interior.

Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system. The Mycenaeans were mainland Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean cultures to develop a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own. The most prominent site was Mycenae, after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Tiryns, and Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens in Central Greece, and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and on Cyprus, while Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in the Levant and Italy.

The Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in the fields of engineering, architecture and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, Linear B, offers the first written records of the Greek language, and their religion already included several deities also to be found in the Olympic pantheon. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace-centered states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social, and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as a wanax.

The olive (botanical name Olea europaea, "European olive") is a species of subtropical evergreen tree in the family Oleaceae. Originating in Asia Minor, it is abundant throughout the Mediterranean Basin, with wild subspecies in Africa and western Asia; modern cultivars are traced primarily to the Near East, Aegean Sea, and Strait of Gibraltar. The olive is the type species for its genus, Olea, and lends its name to the Oleaceae plant family, which includes lilac, jasmine, forsythia, and ash. The olive fruit is classed botanically as a drupe, similar in structure and function to the cherry or peach. The term oil—now used to describe any viscous water-insoluble liquid—was originally synonymous with olive oil, the liquid fat derived from olives.

The olive has deep historical, economic, and cultural significance in the Mediterranean. It is among the oldest fruit trees domesticated by humans, being first cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean between 6,000 and 4,000 BC, most likely in the Levant. The olive gradually disseminated throughout the Mediterranean via trade and human migration starting in the 16th century BC; it took root in Crete around 3500 BC and reached Iberia by about 1050 BC. Olive cultivation was vital to the growth and prosperity of various Mediterranean civilizations, from the Minoans and Myceneans of the Bronze Age to the Greeks and Romans of classical antiquity.

The Delian League was a confederacy of Greek city-states, numbering between 150 and 330, founded in 478 BC under the leadership (hegemony) of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece. The League functioned as a dual—offensive and defensive—alliance (symmachia) of autonomous states, similar to its rival association, the Peloponnesian League. The League's modern name derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held within the sanctuary of the Temple of Apollo; contemporary authors referred to the organization simply as "the Athenians and their Allies".

While Sparta excelled as Greece's greatest power on land, Athens turned to the seas, becoming the dominant naval power of the Greek world. Following Sparta's withdrawal from the conflict with Persia, Athens took the lead of the Hellenic alliance accompanied by several states around the Aegean and the Anatolian coast. The Delian League was formed as an anti-Persian defensive association of equal city-states seeking protection under Athens, as the latter wished to extend its support towards the Ionian Greek colonies of Anatolia. The alliance held an assembly of representatives in order to shape its policy, while members swore an oath of loyalty to the coalition. By the mid-fifth century BC, it had developed into a naval imperial power, conventionally called the Athenian Empire, where Athens established complete dominion and the allies became increasingly less autonomous. The League successfully accomplished its principal strategic goal by decisively expelling the remaining Persian forces from the Aegean. As a result, Persia would cease to pose a major threat to Greece for the following fifty years.

The Late Bronze Age collapse was a period of societal collapse in the Mediterranean basin during the 12th century BC. It is thought to have affected much of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, in particular Egypt, Anatolia, the Aegean, eastern Libya, and the Balkans. The collapse was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations, creating a sharp material decline for the region's previously existing powers.

The palace economy of Mycenaean Greece, the Aegean region, and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted from c. 1100 to c. 750 BC, and were followed by the better-known Archaic Age. The Hittite Empire spanning Anatolia and the Levant collapsed, while states such as the Middle Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia and the New Kingdom of Egypt survived in weakened forms. Other cultures, such as the Phoenicians, enjoyed increased autonomy and power with the waning military presence of Egypt and Assyria in West Asia.

Under the reign of Philip II (359–336 BC), the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, initially at the periphery of classical Greek affairs, came to dominate Ancient Greece in the span of less than 25 years, largely thanks to the character and policies of its king. In addition to utilising effective diplomacy and marriage alliances to achieve his political aims, Philip II was responsible for reforming the ancient Macedonian army into an effective fighting force. The Macedonian phalanx became the hallmark of the Macedonian army during his reign and the subsequent Hellenistic period. His army and engineers also made extensive use of siege engines. Chief among Philip's Thracian enemies was the ruler Kersebleptes, who may have coordinated a temporary alliance with Athens. In a series of campaigns stretching from 356 to 340 BC, Philip II managed to ultimately subjugate Kersebleptes as a tributary vassal, conquering much of Thrace in the process. Philip II also fought against the Illyrian king Bardylis, who threatened Macedonia proper, and against Grabos II and Pleuratus in Illyria (centred in modern-day Albania). In his newly conquered territories, he founded new cities such as Philippi, Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv, Bulgaria), Herakleia Sintike (Pirin Macedonia, Bulgaria), and Herakleia Lynkestis (modern Bitola, North Macedonia).

Philip II eventually campaigned against the city-state of Athens and her allies in the Aegean region, as well as Thebes after the decline of its hegemony in mainland Greece. In the defence of the Amphictyonic League of Delphi and in conjunction with the Thessalian League, Macedonia became a key player in the Third Sacred War (356–346 BC), defeating the Phocians, commanded by Onomarchus, at the Battle of Crocus Field in 352 BC. While poised to launch a direct assault on Athens in 346 BC, the Macedonian king was met with an Athenian embassy that arranged the Peace of Philocrates. As a result, Macedonia and Athens became allies, yet Athens was forced to relinquish its claims to the city of Amphipolis (in modern-day Central Macedonia).