Modern Greece is the result of extraordinarily diverse influences. Romans, Arabs, Latin Crusaders, Venetians, Slavs, Albanians, Turks, Italians, not to mention the Byzantine Empire, have been and gone since the time of Alexander the Great. All have left their mark: the Byzantines in countless churches and monasteries; the Venetians in impregnable fortifications in the Peloponnese; and other Latin powers, such as the Knights of Saint John and the Genoese, in imposing castles across the northern and eastern Aegean. Equally obvious is the heritage of four centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule which, while universally derided, contributed substantially to Greek music, cuisine, language and the way of life. Significant, and still-existing, minorities – Vlachs, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Gypsies – have also helped to forge the hard-to-define but resilient Hellenic identity, which has kept alive the people's sense of themselves throughout their turbulent history. With no indigenous ruling class or formal Renaissance period to impose superior models of taste or patronize the arts, medieval Greek peasants, fishermen and shepherds created a vigorous and truly folk culture, which found expression in the songs and dances, costumes, embroidery, carved furniture and the white cubist houses of popular imagination. Since the 1960s much of this has disappeared under the impact of Western consumer values, relegated to folklore museums at best, but recently the country's architectural and musical heritage in particular have undergone a renaissance, with buildings rescued from dereliction and performers reviving half-forgotten musical traditions.
Not to be missed are Greece's great ancient sites and medieval castles
Of course there are also formal cultural activities: museums that shouldn't be missed, magnificent medieval mansions and castles, as well as the great ancient sites dating from the Neolithic, Mycenean, Minoan, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras. Greece hosts some excellent summer festivals too, bringing international theatre, dance and musical groups to perform at ancient theatres, as well as castle courtyards and more contemporary venues in coastal and island resorts.
But the call to cultural duty will never be too overwhelming on a Greek holiday. The hedonistic pleasures of languor and warmth – going lightly dressed, swimming in balmy seas at dusk, talking and drinking under the stars – are just as appealing. Despite recent improvements to the tourism "product", Greece is still essentially a land for easy-going sybarites, not for those who crave orthopaedic mattresses, faultless plumbing, cordon bleu cuisine and obsequious service. Except at the growing number of luxury facilities in new or restored buildings, hotel and pension rooms can be box-like; Greek food at its best is fresh, abundant and uncomplicated.
Fact file
• Greece is one of the EU's 27 members, its surface area of 131,957 square kilometres (50,949 square miles) divided into 51 provinces. No other country, except Indonesia, Denmark and the Philippines, has so much territory in the form of islands. The population is overwhelmingly Greek-speaking and 95 percent are Greek Orthodox in faith, though there are Catholic, Sunni Muslim, Jewish, Armenian and evangelical Christian minorities, plus pockets of Turkish-, Romany- and Macedonian-speakers. Well over half the population live in urban areas.
• Per "native" population of 10.4 million, Greece has Europe's highest proportion of immigrants – officially 800,000, but effectively 1.4 million, two-thirds of these Albanian.
• Greece is a parliamentary republic, with the president as head of state, and a 300-seat parliament led by the prime minister. PASOK, the (ostensibly) social-democratic party, governed for 19 of 23 years after 1981, finally being ousted in 2004 by the centre-right Néa Dhimokratía party, returned to power by a narrower margin in 2007. There are also two small communist parties which between them typically pick up eight to ten percent of the vote, and a far-right nationalist party, LAOS, at four percent.
•Tourism is the country's main foreign-currency earner. Shipping ranks second, with banking, services and light industry gaining on agricultural products such as olive oil and olives, citrus and wine. |
