The Rough Guide to Greece, 8th - Softcover

With well over a hundred inhabited islands and a territory that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Balkans, Greece has interest enough to fill months of travel. The historic sites span four millennia, encompassing the legendary and renowned - such as Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi and the Parthenon - and the obscure, where a visit can still seem like a personal discovery. The beaches are parcelled out along a convoluted coastline equal to France's in length, and they range from those of islands where the boat calls twice a week to resorts as cosmopolitan as any in the Mediterranean. Perhaps more surprisingly, the country's mountainous interior offers some of the best and least exploited hiking in Europe.

Modern Greece is the result of an extraordinary diversity of influences. Romans, Arabs, Latin Crusaders, Venetians, Slavs, Albanians, Turks, Italians, to say nothing of the Orthodox Byzantine empire, have been and gone since the time of Alexander the Great. All have left their mark: the Byzantines in countless churches and monasteries and in ghost towns like Mystra; the Venetians in impregnable fortifications at Nafplio, Monemvassia and Methoni in the Peloponnese; and other Latin powers, such as the Knights of Saint John and the Genoese, in magnificent castles throughout the eastern Aegean. Most obvious of all is the heritage of four hundred years of Ottoman Turkish rule which, while universally derided, exercised an inestimable influence on music, cuisine, language and way of life. The contributions, and continued existence, of substantial minorities - Vlachs, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Gypsies - have also helped to forge the Hellenic identity.

All these players have been instrumental in forming a hard-to-define but powerful sense of Greekness, which has kept alive the people's sense of themselves throughout their turbulent history. With no local ruling class or formal Renaissance period to impose a superior model of taste or to patronize the arts, medieval Greek peasants, fishermen and shepherds created a vigorous and truly popular culture. It is still manifest in a thousand instinctively tasteful ways, ranging from traditional music, intricate embroidery, woven goods and carved furniture, to the stereotypically white cubist houses of popular images.

Of course there are formal cultural activities as well: museums that shouldn't be missed in Athens, Thessaloniki and Iraklion; the compelling monasteries of the Meteora and Mount Athos; the magnificent mansions of Zagori and Pílion; castles such as those in the Dodecanese, northeast Aegean, central Greece and the Peloponnese; as well, of course, as the great ancient sites dating from the Mycenaean, Minoan, Classical, Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine eras. The country hosts some excellent summer festivals too, bringing international theatre, dance and musical groups to perform in ancient theatres at Epidaurus, Dodona and Athens, as well as castle courtyards and more contemporary venues in coastal and island resorts.

But the call to cultural duty should never be too overwhelming on a Greek holiday. The hedonistic pleasures of languor and warmth - always going lightly dressed, swimming in balmy seas at dusk, talking and drinking under the stars - are just as appealing. But despite recent improvements to the tourism "product", Greece is still essentially a land for adaptable sybarites, not for those who crave five-star treatment with super-soft beds, faultless plumbing, Cordon-Bleu cuisine and attentive service. Except at the growing number of luxury facilities in new or restored buildings, hotel and pension rooms can be box-like, campsites offer the minimum of facilities, and the food at its best is fresh and uncomplicated.