Greece [antikvár]

Greece has always attracted travellers, drawn by the fascination of somé of Europe's eariiest civilisations. Philosophers muse that to journey to Greece is to return home, for the legacy of ancient Greece pervades the consciousness of all western nations. Greek Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns adorn many of our buildings, and much of our greatest early literature drew on the Greek myths for inspiration. Somé of our most evocative words are Greek - chaos, drama, tragedy and democracy, to name a few. Perhaps the greatest legacy is democracy itself. While it was this underlying awareness of Greek culture that drew the wealthy young aristocrats of the 19th century to the country, the majority of today's visitors are drawn by Greece's beaches and sunshine. Islandhopping has become something of an initiation rite for the international singles set. Their numbers are dwarfed, however, by the millions of package holiday-makers who come to Greece every year in search of two weeks of sunshine by the sea. Package tourism took off with the advent of cheaper airfares in the 1960s and gathered pace through the 70s and 80s. By the early 1990s, almost nine millión visitors a year were pouring through the turnstiles, making tourism easily the most important industry in the country. The ancient sites are an enduring attraction. The Acropolis needs no introduction as the most remarkable legacy of the classical period. At Knossos on Crete, you can wander around the ancient capital of one of Europe's oldest civilisations: the Minoan. The many Minoan, Mycenaean and classical Greek sites, and elaborate Byzantine churches, stand alongside the legacies left by foreign occupiers: towering Venetian, Frankish and Turkish castles, and crumbling, forgottén mosques. Reminders of the past are everywhere. The Greek landscape is littered with broken columns and crumbling fragments of ancient walls. Moreover, there is hardly a meadow, river or mountaintop which is not sacred because of its association with somé deity, and the spectres of the past linger still. Greece has clung to its traditions more tenaciously than most European countries. Through hundreds of years of foreign occupation by Franks, Venetians, Turks and others, tradition and religion were the factors that kept the notion of Greek nationhood alive. Greeks today remain only too well aware of the hardships their forebears endured. Even hip, young Greeks defend these traditions and enthusiastically participate in many of them. The traditions manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including régiónál costumes, such as the baggy pantaloons and high boots worn by elderly Cretan men, and in the embroidered dresses and floral headscarves worn by the women of Olymbos, on Karpathos. Many traditions take the form of festivals, where Greeks express their moldovai AUSTRJA! hungary SLOVENiAN^ 5^-ÍCKOA 1IA romania V UOSNIA-S .1ILRCLCOVINA fvu r.osi avta' bucahia " fyro macixíoma libya BLACK ".greeceturkey SJ 7r |r^SHL ^ v'*\ & 'MaisMALTA MEDITERRANEAN SE A egypt