Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula. It is bordered by Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and by Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east and south of mainland Greece, while the Ionian Sea lies to the west. Both parts of the eastern Mediterranean basin feature a vast number of islands.
Greece lies at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is heir to the heritages of classical Greece, the Byzantine Empire, and nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule. Regarded as the cradle of western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, the Olympic Games, western literature, political science, major scientific principles and drama (including both tragedy and comedy), Greece has a particularly long and eventful history and a cultural heritage considerably influential in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and fundamentally formative for the culture of Europe and what may be called the West.
Greek culture evolved over several thousand years, with its earliest known civilization being in the Mycenean and Minoan era, continuing into Classical Greece, the birth of the Hellenistic era and through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern successor the Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire also had a significant influence on Greek culture, but the Greek war of independence is credited for the revitalization Greece and establishing a single [once again] sovereign single entity (though notably smaller), of its multi-faceted culture throughout the ages.
Notably Greece is known as "the cradle of Western civilization".
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