List of hotels in Greece written in Crete language.

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in southern Europe on the tip of the Balkan peninsula. It has land boundaries with Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania to the north, and with Turkey to the east. The waters of the Aegean Sea border Greece to the east, and those of the Ionian and Mediterranean Sea to the west and south. Regarded by many as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, Greece has a long and rich history during which its culture has proven especially influential in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

The shores of Greece's Aegean Sea saw the emergence of the first civilizations in Europe, namely the Minoan and the Mycenaean. After this, a Dark Age followed until around 800 BC, when a new era of Greek city-states emerged, establishing colonies along the Mediterranean, and a new alphabet was introduced. Plato described how the Greeks live round the Aegean Archipelago "like frogs around a pond"; their name has always been associated with the sea.

The Ottomans ruled Greece until the early 19th century. In 1821, the Greeks and their allies rebelled and declared their independence, but did not succeed in winning it until 1829. The elites of powerful European nations saw the war of Greek independence, with its accounts of Turkish atrocities, in a romantic light. Scores of non-Greeks volunteered to fight for the cause — including people like Lord Byron. At times the Ottomans seemed on the verge of entirely suppressing the Greek revolution but were eventually forced to give in by the direct military intervention of France, Great Britain and Russia. This was the prelude of the so called "Eastern Question", the gradual dismemberment of the decaying empire by the western powers. The Russian ex-minister of foreign affairs, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek noble from the Ionian Islands, was chosen as President of the new Republic following Greek independence. However, that republic was soon dissolved by the Great Powers which then installed a "Greek" monarchy. The Great Powers did not wish the Greeks to govern themselves and also claimed that they were not capable to do so; as such they looked elsewhere for a prospective monarch. The first king, Otto of Bavaria, was of the German House of Wittelsbach and the subsequent line was from the Germano-Danish House of Oldenburg. During the 19th and especially the early 20th centuries, in a series of wars with the Ottomans, Greece sought to enlarge its boundaries to include the ethnic Greek population of the Ottoman Empire. Greece would slowly grow in territory and population until reaching its present configuration in 1947.