97. Greece: A Modern Nation Built on Ancient Memory

All right, let's start off with where Greece is.

So Greece is located in southeastern Europe at the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula.

It borders Albania, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria to the north and Turkey to the east.

And then on the other three sides, there is water.

The Ionian Sea is to the west, the Aegean Sea is to the east, and the Mediterranean stretches to the south.

Now, that location matters a lot.

Greece sits at a crossroads between Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa.

For thousands of years, people, goods, armies, religions, ideas have moved through this region.

It has always been right in the middle of major historical worlds.

And the geography of Greece is very dramatic.

The mainland is very mountainous.

About 80% of the country is mountains or hills.

And that's mattered throughout Greek history because those mountains meant that different regions were effectively isolated from each other.

This is part of why ancient Greece... was organized into city-states rather than one unified nation.

The geography made it natural for each valley or coastal plain or wherever to develop its own political life.

It also made it harder to unify.

The highest mountain in Greece is Mount Olympus, which rises to nearly 10,000 feet tall, and in Greek mythology, this was the home of the gods.

Now, one thing that makes Greece geographically extraordinary is the coastline.

Greece has the 11th long coastline in the world, more than 8,000 miles.

That's about 13,000 kilometers of coastline.

And that's because the country doesn't just have a mainland.

It has islands, somewhere between 1,200 to 6,000 islands, depending on how you want to count them.

of which only about 227 are permanently inhabited.

There are large islands like Crete, which is large and mountainous and has its own very distinct culture and history.

And there are tiny islands that are home to just a smattering of houses.