Greece borders in the north (from west to east) with Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey. For the rest, mainland Greece is hidden by the Mediterranean Sea (to the south), the Ionian Sea (to the west) and the Aegean Sea (to the east). The islands make up about 20% of the land area. The largest islands are Crete, Euboea (Evia), Lesbos and Rhodes.

Ancient Greece is seen as the cradle of European and Western culture. Although the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations have existed for centuries, the culture also has these as its starting point from the 8th century BC. Here democracy as a form of government flourished, important scientific principles were devised and discovered and Western philosophy and the Western literary canon, Western theater, architecture and the Olympic Games developed. The ancient Greeks inhabited city-states such as Athens, Sparta and Thebes. From the time of Alexander the Great (4th century BC), the Ancient Greek language and Hellenistic culture, and later also the Greek Orthodox Church, spread over a wide area. Greek culture was also ubiquitous under Roman and Byzantine rule. It only achieved its own state in 1830, when the Greeks broke away from the Ottoman Empire, which had caused Byzantine rule, after a War of Independence. In the following decades, Greece grew to its current size.