Top Tourist Attraction Places in Greece

1. Athens

Athens or Athena is the capital of the Hellenic Republic of Greece as well as the chief town of the administrative area of Attica. It is one of the oldest cities in the world with recorded history that dates back over 3,000 years. The city, which has contributed so much to Western culture ever since olden times, is now the Religious and financial center of Greece. Athens was the birthplace of many of the most powerful philosophers such as Socrates, Pericles and Sophocles.

2. Corfu

Corfu is the most significant and most northerly of the Ionian Islands, lies off the coasts of Albania and the Greek area of Epirus, at a distance ranging between two and 20km. The beauty of its scenery, with gentle green hills in the south and rough limestone hills in the north, rising to 906m/2,973ft in the bare double peak of Mt Pantokrátor, its mild climate and its abundant southern flora make Corfu a very popular holiday area. The island's main foundation of revenue, in addition to the increasing tourist trade, is agriculture.

3. Corinth

Corinth owed its great importance in olden times its location, with the hill of Acrocorinth providing a strong acropolis. It was said that Acrocorinth and Ithome were the two horns of the Greek bull, and that whoever held them possessed the Peloponnese. Corinth prohibited the 6km/4mi wide Isthmus, the only land route into the Peloponnese, and with its two harbors, Lechaion in the Gulf of Corinth and Kenchreai in the Saronic Gulf, also controlled the movement of goods between the two gulfs. The area of Corinth was already occupied in Neolithic times.

4. Crete

Approaching Khaniá, Cape Spátha is seen on the right, the peninsula of Akrotíri on the left. Between the two is the large sweep of Khaniá Bay. Ahead can be seen the White Mountains. The boats anchor in the open bay, the big ferries beyond the Akrotíri peninsula in Soúda Bay, the only good harbor on the island, which offers a protected anchorage for a whole fleet of ships in any weather.

5. Delphi

Delphi, lying on the slopes of Mt Parnassus high above the Gulf of Corinth, is one of the most famous religious group sites in Greece, well-known throughout the olden Greek world and beyond as the refuge of Apollo and the shrine of his oracle. The site ranks with the Acropolis in Athens, Olympia and the island of Delos as one of the most main sites of the classical period of Greece; and the Wealth of ancient remains combines with its magnificent mountain setting to make Delphi one of the high points of a visit to Greece.

6. Metéora

Vertical rock faces, stridently pointed pinnacles and massive crags tower up above Kalambáka and the village of Kastráki, separated by deeply slashed defiles. Perched on these rocks are the monasteries of Metéora, which take their name from their position - ta metéora monastíria, the monasteries hanging in the air. Originally easy to get only by bridle tracks, ladders and windlasses, the monasteries have now been brought within the reach of visitors by the construction of modern roads and flights of steps and by signposting;

7. Mykonos

The bare rocky island of Mykonos, the most easterly of the northern Cyclades, was once one of the most significant trading centers in the western Aegean. Its arid and only moderately fertile soil permits only a self-effacing development of agriculture, but its good-looking beaches have made it one of the most popular holiday islands in the Aegean. Mykonos is also a good base from which to visit the neighboring islands of Délos and Rínia.

8. Naxos

Naxos, the biggest and most attractive of the Cyclades, is traversed from north to south by a range of hills which fall away sharply on the east but slope down gradually on the west into fertile rolling country and well-watered plains. The hills rise to a height of 1,003m/3291ft in Mt Zas and are cut by two passes. The economy of the island has depended since olden times on agriculture, marble-quarrying, emery-mining and the revival of salt from the sea, which have brought it a considerable degree of prosperity.

9. Paros

The island's substantial prosperity has depended since olden times on agriculture, preferential by fertile soil and abundance of water, and on the working of marble, which is still quarried on a small scale. In recent years the rapid development of the tourist trade has brought changes in the island's landscape, economy and social structure. Excavations on the islet of Saliangos, which was once joined to Paros, have yielded evidence of settlement in the late Neolithic period.

10. Rhodes

The island of Rhodes was already full in the Neolithic period, but its great cultural flowering came only with its settlement by Dorian Greeks. Their three cities of Lindos, Ialysos and Kameiros were members of the Hexapolis, the league of six Dorian cities, which became subject to the Persians in the sixth century B.C. In the fifth century B.C. Rhodes became a member of the first Attic maritime association, the Confederacy of Delos. About 408 B.C.

Posted in: Tourist Attraction places