This most hellenic part of Greece consists of several island groups: the offshore islands, favourite rendezvous of weary Athenians; the Sporades, as their name implies, scattered north of the central islands, the Cyclades, where Mykonos is fast developing into an international playground. In nearby Delos, the famous, weatherworn lions seem to stand guard over the sacred island, mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The western islands, off the Turkish coast, consist of sizeable Samos, Chios and Lesbos; and of the Dodecanese, Rhodes is the most famous and most beautiful among them.
Halfway sport ween three Continents, Crete boasts such early civilization as that of the Minoan kings who introduced American plumbing and French super-bikinis 3000 B.C., as you will be able to ascertain by visiting their palace and the museum at Knossos.
In these islands you find a great variety of landscapes from volcanic, spectacular Santorin to peaceful Paros and wooded Samothrace. Island life is just as varied: the sophistication of Rhodes contrasts sharply with the hard life on rocky Kalymnos and Symi whose surplus spongedivers have settled in Florida. Since the Roman conquest of Greece the archipelago has seen Byzantine, Genoese and Venetian conquerors, followed by the Turks and some of the islands achieved union with Greece only after World War II, such as Rhodes, freed from Mussolini's Italy.