History, art, and culture of Greece

Holiday Destinations / Europe / Greece / Travel Guide / Greek Arts, History, and Culture

Cradle of western civilization, Greece is a land rich in history, art and culture and its people are particularly attached to their traditions.

Greece is a land rich in history, art, and culture to be defined the cradle of western civilization. The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, starting with the Minoan and Doric civilizations which have left important evidence of their greatness throughout the Greek territory.

The temples and theatres are among the most remarkable surviving buildings. Greece is the place where the tragedy and comedy originated, which were represented in majestic theatres, the result of skilful structural calculations that allowed the best staging and the greatest emotional involvement of the public, places where the polis met to celebrate the ancient stories of the myths written by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides for the tragedy, Cratino and Aristophanes for the comedy, just to name a few. The ancient Greek philosophical thought of which Socrates, Democritus, Plato and Aristotle were also immense.

The museums in Greece are many and of great importance such as the archaeological sites , among which the most important are the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, the Agora of Athens, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, the Oracle of Delphi and the Archaeological Museum of Delphi and  the Palace of the Grand Masters in the city of Rhodes, which embrace over 4 thousand years of history, witnesses of the greatness first of Mycenaean Greece, then of the classical period, through the dominion of the Roman Empire and later of the byzantine empire. Other sites not to be missed , including UNESCO heritage sites, are the Minoan palace of Knossos in Crete, the Byzantine monument of Nea Moni of Chios, the Wall of Polycrates and the Eupalinosa Tunnel in Samos and the perched monasteries of Meteora in Kalabaka.