AskBiography Logo   Latest News  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Google Buzz  Became Fan - Facebook  Subscribe to RSSRSS   Bookmark and Share

Greece

Greece
General information
Common nameGreece
Local nameΕλληνική Δημοκρατία
Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía
NameΕλληνική Δημοκρατία
Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía
MottoEleftheria i Thanatos, (Greek: "Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος", "Freedom or Death") (traditional)
Anthem
Ýmnos is tin Eleftherían
Hymn to Liberty1"
CapitalAthens
Largest cityAthens
Official languagesGreek
DemonymGreek (Officially: Hellenic)
Government
GovernmentUnitary parliamentary republic
PresidentKarolos Papoulias
Prime MinisterGeorge Papandreou MP
LegislatureParliament
Independence from the Ottoman EmpireIndependence from the Ottoman Empire
Declared1 January 1822, at the First National Assembly
Recognized3 February 1830, in the London Protocol
Current constitution11 June 1975,
Third Hellenic Republic
EU accession1 January 1981
Geography
Total Area50944 sq mi (131945 km2) (96th)
Water %0.8669
Demography
Population Est.11305118 (74th)
Population census10787690 (2011 (preliminary data))
Density (pop.)85.3/km2 (88th) (221.0/sq mi)
Economy
GDP PPP$318.082 billion (2010) (37th)
GDP (PPP) per capita$28,434 (29th)
GDP (nominal)$305.415 billion (2010) (32nd)
GDP (nominal) per capita$27,302 (29th)
Other information
Gini33 (2005)
HDI(+) 0.855 (2010|HDI_category=very high) (very high) (22nd)
CurrencyEuro (-)2 (EUR)
Time zoneEET (UTC+2)
- Summer (DST)EEST (UTC+3)
Drives on theright
Internet TLD.gr3
Calling code30

     Home | Country | Greece





Greece c-enaudio=en-us-Greece.oggˈɡriːs ( , Elláda, -eleˈlaðaIPAEllada, also known as Hellas ( , Hellás, -elhellásIPA) and officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía, -eleliniˈci ðimokraˈtiaIPA), is a country in southeastern Europe.

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 13676 km (8497.9 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2917 m (1.8 mi).

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, university education, coinage, and Western drama, including both tragedy and comedy. This legacy is partly reflected in the seventeen UNESCO World Heritage Sites located in Greece, ranking Greece 7th in Europe and 13th in the world. The modern Greek state was established in 1830, following the Greek War of Independence.

A developed country with an advanced, high-income economy and very high standards of living (including the 22nd highest Human Development Index in the world ), Greece has been a member of what is now the European Union since 1981 and the eurozone since 2001, NATO since 1952, and the European Space Agency since 2005. It is also a founding member of the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.

Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus, Greece's most significant port).


Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Greece?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 410 Gone in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Greece?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10" in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 260