Greece is deep blue skies and turquoise seas, and white houses stacked like cubes on a hillside above a harbour, enticing modern tourism to the islands. It is a country with a unique culture, a unique language, a landscape that is among the least explored in Europe, and people who are the most hospitable in the world.

Greece has always been a maritime nation, and much of its past wealth has come from shipping dynasties, of which the Onassis family is probably the best known. It was inevitable that a country which includes about 2,000 islands should develop knowledge of the sea.

Greece is very much a rural country and until the advent of tourism its economy was as dependent on agriculture as on fishing and the shipping trade. The overwhelmingly predominant crop is olives. Olive groves dominate the landscape.