Greece, the southernmost of the countries of the Balkan Peninsula . Geography has greatly influenced the country’s development. Mountains historically restricted internal communications, but the ocean opened wider horizons. the entire acreage of Greece (one-fifth of which is formed from the Greek islands) is comparable in size to England or the U.S. state of Alabama.
Greece has quite 2,000 islands, of which about 170 are inhabited; a number of the easternmost Aegean islands lie just a couple of miles off the Turkish coast. The country’s capital is Athens, which expanded rapidly within the last half of the 20th century. Attikí (ancient Greek: Attica), the world round the capital, is now home to about one-third of the country’s entire population.
A Greek legend has it that God distributed soil through a sieve and used the stones that remained to create Greece. The country’s barren landscape historically caused the people to migrate. The Greeks, just like the Jews and therefore the Armenians, traditionally are nation of diaspora, and a number of other million people of Greek descent sleep in various parts of the planet . Xeniteia, or sojourning in foreign lands, with its strong overtones of nostalgia for the faraway homeland, has been a central element within the historical experience of the Greek people.
Greece may be a country that’s directly European, Balkan, Mediterranean, and Near Eastern. It lies at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and Africa and is heir to the heritages of Classical Greece, the Byzantine Empire , and nearly four centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.