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Aegean Sea
The island-strewn sea where Greek civilization was born
Scattered with hundreds of sun-bleached islands between Greece and Turkey, the Aegean is the sea of myth and the birthplace of Western civilization. Its waters cradled the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenaeans of the mainland, carried the ships of Homer's heroes toward Troy, and bound together the city-states of classical Greece. Few seas are so densely woven into the literature, philosophy, and art of the Western tradition, and few are so instantly recognisable, with their whitewashed villages above impossibly blue water.
Covering about 214,000 square kilometres, the Aegean is an arm of the Mediterranean studded with the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, and larger islands like Crete, Lesbos, and Rhodes — the drowned peaks of submerged mountain ranges. It deepens toward the south, reaching about 2,639 metres west of Karpathos, and connects northeastward through the Dardanelles to the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, and southward past Crete to the open Mediterranean. The seismic faults that raise and shake its islands also built the volcanic caldera of Santorini.
This sea was the stage on which the Greek world played out — the naval battle of Salamis that turned back Persia, the maritime empire of Athens, the spread of Greek colonies and ideas across the Mediterranean. Its islands later passed through Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman hands, and they sit at the heart of the modern boundary between Greece and Turkey. Today the Aegean is a beloved cruising and holiday sea, even as it serves as a fraught crossing point for migrants reaching Europe.