Geography Quiz Arcade

Greece 🇬🇷

Greece is a country in Europe with a population of 10,384,971. Its capital is Athens. The official currency is EUR, and the main languages are Greek.

Quick facts

  • Capital: Athens
  • Continent: Europe
  • Population: 10,384,971
  • Area: 131,957 km²
  • Density: 78.7 people per km²
  • Currency: EUR
  • Languages: Greek
  • ISO code: GR

Where Greece sits

Greece 🇬🇷 is one of 46 countries in Europe, with its capital at Athens. It covers 131,957 square kilometres — 95th in the world — and is home to about 10,384,971 people, 90th globally.

The countries it shares a continent with include Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Italy. If you are learning geography region by region — which works far better than alphabetically, because memory for places is spatial — those are the ones to learn alongside it.

How Greece compares

Raw figures are hard to hold on their own, so it helps to anchor them. In population, Greece sits closest to Azerbaijan and Honduras. In land area, its nearest counterparts are Nicaragua and Tajikistan.

At 78.7 people per square kilometre it is somewhat above the world average of 59.4. It ranks higher by population than by area, so it is more crowded than its size alone suggests.

Greek is an official language in 2 countries here, among them Cyprus. The EUR is shared with 25 other countries, including Andorra, Austria and Belgium, and 22 others.

To see Greece next to every other country, sort the country rankings by population, area or density; its currency and languages are listed alongside every other country's in world currencies and world languages.

How to remember Greece

Athens is named after the goddess Athena, and its most famous temple on the Acropolis, the Parthenon, was built for her. Nine stripes, blue and white like the sea and its waves.

The flag of Greece: blue and white

🇬🇷 The flag is nine horizontal stripes of blue and white, with a white cross on a blue square in the top-left corner. Blue and white are often linked to the Greek sky and sea. The cross stands for the Greek Orthodox Church. The stripes have no official meaning, but the most popular story is that the nine stripes match the nine syllables of the motto 'Freedom or Death'.

Region and neighbours

Greece is a country in southeastern Europe at the southern tip of the Balkans, with coasts on the Aegean, Ionian and Mediterranean seas. It shares land borders with 4 countries: Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Three facts about Greece

  1. Greece has thousands of islands, and up to 227 of them have people living on them.
  2. Mount Olympus, home of the gods in Greek myths, is the highest mountain in Greece at about 2,918 m.
  3. Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Sources: Wikipedia: Greece, Wikipedia: Flag of Greece, Wikipedia: Athens, CIA World Factbook.

Quiz yourself on Greece

Quizzes that include Greece

Three angles are worth covering for any country — where it is, what its flag looks like, and what its capital is. For Greece those are:

Doing all three for one continent before moving on is far more efficient than learning flags globally, then capitals globally, then the map.

Read more about Greece

Nearby countries

Frequently asked questions

What are the colours of the Greece flag?

The flag of Greece is nine horizontal stripes of blue and white, with a white cross on a blue square in the top-left corner. Blue and white are often linked to the Greek sky and sea. The cross stands for the Greek Orthodox Church. The stripes have no official meaning, but the most popular story is that the nine stripes match the nine syllables of the motto 'Freedom or Death'.

Which countries border Greece?

Greece shares land borders with Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey.

How can I remember the capital of Greece?

Athens is named after the goddess Athena, and its most famous temple on the Acropolis, the Parthenon, was built for her. Nine stripes, blue and white like the sea and its waves.