Greece

Greece is a country in Europe.

The sea is on three sides of it. Greece has more than 2,000 islands. It has big mountains too. The capital city is Athens.

Greece is in southern Europe, at the very bottom of the Balkan Peninsula. The Aegean Sea lies to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Ionian Sea to the west. Only in the north does Greece have land borders with other countries.

Greece has more than 2,000 islands, and people live on about 170 of them. The biggest is Crete, shown here with its old lighthouse. On the mainland, mountains cover most of the land. About 10.4 million people lived in Greece at the start of 2025, and about one in three of them live in Attica, the area around the capital, Athens.

Greece occupies the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula and is bounded by the Aegean Sea to the east, the Mediterranean to the south and the Ionian Sea to the west. Its only land borders, some 1,180 km in total, run along the north and northeast. Britannica notes that the mainland is so deeply indented by the sea that only a small wedge of the interior lies more than 80 km from a coast.

The country has more than 2,000 islands, of which about 170 are inhabited, and the islands make up about one-fifth of its land area. The Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) estimates the resident population at 10,372,335 on 1 January 2025, slightly fewer than a year earlier. Attica, the region around Athens, is home to about one-third of the population; Athens expanded rapidly in the second half of the 20th century.

Athens is the biggest city in Greece.

A rocky hill stands in the middle of it. On top are very old stone buildings. People built them long, long ago. Visitors climb up to see them.

Athens is the capital of Greece. It sits in a dry basin ringed by mountains, 8 kilometers from the sea and its port, Piraeus. In the middle of the city rises the Acropolis, a rocky hill covered with ancient buildings. The Parthenon, a white marble temple built between 447 and 438 BCE, dominates the hill.

There are other famous old places too. Mycenae, in the south, was one of the greatest cities of a people who lived more than 3,000 years ago. At Olympia, people held the Olympic Games every four years, beginning in 776 BCE. The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896, and Athens hosted them again in 2004.

Britannica describes Athens, the capital, as under foreign rule for almost 2,000 years until the city was freed in 1833. Its Acropolis, a World Heritage Site since 1987, holds what UNESCO calls the greatest architectural and artistic complex left by Greek Antiquity, built in the second half of the 5th century BCE under the statesman Pericles and the sculptor Pheidias. The Parthenon, by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates, was begun in 447 BCE and completed by 438; it later served as a church and a mosque, and it became a ruin only in 1687, when gunpowder stored inside exploded during a Venetian bombardment.

Mycenae and Tiryns (inscribed 1999) were the two greatest cities of the Mycenaean civilization, which dominated the eastern Mediterranean from the 15th to the 12th century BCE. Olympia (1989) preserves the remains of the stadium, hippodrome, gymnasium and other structures of the Olympic Games, celebrated there every four years from 776 BCE to 393 CE.

Greece has lots of mountains.

Mount Olympus is the tallest one. Its top has snow. Summers in Greece are hot and dry. In winter, snow covers the tallest peaks.

Mountains cover about four-fifths of Greece. The Pindus Mountains form the core of the mainland. The highest peak in the country is Mount Olympus, about 2,918 meters tall, often capped with snow and wrapped in cloud.

Greece has a Mediterranean climate. Summers are hot and dry almost everywhere, with July temperatures near the sea of about 27 °C. In winter, rain comes in from the west, and snow often covers the highest peaks. The ground still moves here: earthquakes happen often. Crete, the largest island, is about 260 kilometers long, with mountains and gorges.

Britannica describes three elements in the Greek landscape: sea, mountains and lowland. Mountains cover some four-fifths of the country. Northeastern Greece rests on an old, hard block of Hercynian rock, while the western and southern ranges are younger, mostly limestone rocks folded during the Alpine mountain-building of about 66 to 2.6 million years ago. Later fracturing created the sunken basins of the Ionian and Aegean seas, and frequent earthquakes show that the movement continues. Marble, limestone altered by pressure and heat, is widespread. Mount Olympus is the highest point: a 2022 satellite survey by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki measured it at 2,917.73 m, about 2,918 m; the Pindus range reaches 2,637 m at Mount Smólikas.

The climate is Mediterranean: hot, dry summers, eased on the coast by sea breezes, and rainy winters that bring about 1,320 mm a year to Corfu but about 400 mm to Athens. Crete, 8,336 km² and 260 km long, rises to 2,456 m on Mount Ídi; its Samariá Gorge is rich in endemic plants.

Brown bears and wolves live in the forests of Greece.

Wild goats live in faraway mountains. Pelicans and storks live there too. In spring, the lowlands bloom with bright flowers.

The forests of northern Greece are home to roe deer, martens and brown bears, and, more rarely, wolves, wild boars and lynx. In the hot, dry Mediterranean areas live hares, wild goats and porcupines. On Crete, a wild goat called the agrimi lives in remote mountains and on small islands, where wildlife reserves protect it.

Birds such as pelicans, storks, herons and vultures live in Greece, and many birds stop there on their long trips to and from Africa. Greece is also a land of flowers: it has about 6,000 kinds of wildflowers, and about 600 of them grow nowhere else.

Greek vegetation and wildlife mix Mediterranean and western Asian species with others from central Europe. Britannica lists wildcats, martens, brown bears and roe deer in the northern forests, with wolves, wild boars and lynx more rarely, and hares, wild goats and porcupines in the drier Mediterranean regions. Crete's agrími, a wild goat, survives in remote mountains and on offshore islands under the protection of wildlife reserves. Its birds include owls, vultures, pelicans, storks and herons; many species from farther north spend the winter in Greece, and others stop over on migration to and from Africa.

About 6,000 species of wildflowers grow in Greece, some 600 of them endemic. About half the land in central and southern Greece is under scrub, including maquis of oleander, bay, evergreen oak, olive and juniper, especially in the Peloponnese; black pine forests cover Mount Olympus, and the Grecian fir dominates higher northern slopes. Britannica notes that reptiles have come under pressure from overdevelopment and marine life from exhaustive fishing.

About 10 million people live in Greece.

Most people speak Greek. Greek has its own letters. Many meals have bread, olives, cheese, vegetables and fish.

About 10.4 million people lived in Greece at the start of 2025. Greek is the official language, and it is one of the oldest recorded languages of its family, the Indo-European languages. Its earliest writing, called Linear B, is about 3,500 years old. People in Greece also speak other languages, such as Turkish, Albanian and Romani.

The traditional food of the Greek countryside was based on vegetables, fruit, olives, olive oil, cheese, bread and seafood. In many small towns and villages, people stroll up and down the main street or along the shore at sundown, a custom called the volta. Almost everyone in Greece belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church, and Easter is the most important religious and family festival.

Greece had an estimated 10,372,335 residents on 1 January 2025 (ELSTAT). Greek, one of the oldest recorded Indo-European languages, is first written in Linear B in about the 15th century BCE; Standard Modern Greek is the official language. Britannica records a long history of ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity, especially in the north, and lists minority languages such as Turkish, Macedonian, Albanian, Aromanian and Romani, which are not officially recognized. The only officially recognized minority is the Muslim minority of Thrace, acknowledged in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Virtually all the population belongs to the Church of Greece, an Eastern Orthodox church.

About one in five people live in rural areas, yet Britannica notes that village life remains a strong influence. The traditional rural diet of vegetables, fruit, olives, olive oil, cheese, bread and seafood treated meat as a luxury; sweets such as baklava and kataifi reflect centuries of Ottoman rule. Easter, often celebrated in home villages with lamb roasted on a spit, is the main religious and family festival.