Born out of conflict between ruling Turkish Ottomans and an alliance of nations including Russia, Britain and France, the rump of modern Greece declared independence in 1832, comprising just a couple of mainland areas plus the Cyclades and Sporades islands. Over the following decades, the new state gradually drew in other Greek-speaking areas - first Thessaly and the Ionian islands, the Aegean islands and Crete in the early 20th century.

Greece fought on against old enemy Turkey in the aftermath of WW1, until a 1923 peace treaty saw a massive population swap, with 1.5m Greeks deported from Turkey to Greece, and 400,000 Turks going the other way – a move that imposed huge strains on the fragile Greek economy and remains a cause of rancour. After the Nazis retreated in 1944, Greece descended into civil war on the mainland, then in Cyprus. A brief period of peace in the early 1960s ended with a military coup in 1967, installing a junta that ruled until 1974.

Greece's 6,000 years of history before the modern era really is far too rich to chronicle briefly. And its jaw-dropping archaeological sites and historic buildings (medieval, Venetian, Ottoman) do it so eloquently, backed up by a majestic body of classical literature: Homeric saga, theatre, philosophy. Visit the places of myth and see how history comes effortlessly alive in Greece.