Greece

Greece, also known as Hellas and officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in southeastern Europe. Situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula, Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the twelfth longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others.

Modern Greece traces its roots to the civilization of ancient Greece, generally considered the cradle of Western civilization. As such, it is the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, the Olympic Games, Western literature and historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, and Western drama. The modern Greek state was established in 1830, following a victorious uprising against Ottoman rule.

A developed country with an advanced, high-income economy, a very high Human Development Index and consistently high quality of life rankings, Greece has been a member of what is now the European Union since 1981 and the Eurozone since 2001, It is also a founding member of the United Nations. More recently, it has borne the brunt of the late-2000s recession and related 2010 European sovereign debt crisis.