Aegean Sea

AEGEAN SEA is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea located between the Greek peninsula on the west and Asia Minor on the east. It is connected through the straits of Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus to the Black Sea. The Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including the islands of Crete and Rhodes. The Aegean Sea with its Aegean islands is renowned for its large number of islands.

The Aegean Sea has about 1,415 islands and islets, of which almost 1,395 belong to Greece. The Greek Aegean Sea can be divided into seven groups: the Northeastern Aegean Islands, Euboea, The Northern Sporades, The Cyclades and the Saronic Islands. Many of the Aegean Islands, or chains of islands, are actually extensions of the mountains on the mainland.

In ancient times the sea was the birthplace of two ancient civilizations – the Minoans of Crete, and the Mycenean Civilisation of the Peloponnese. Later arose the city- states of Athens and Sparta among many others that constituted the Athenian Empire and Hellenic Civilisation. Plato described the Greeks living round the Aegean "like frogs around a pond". The Aegean Sea was later invaded by Persians and the Romans, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire, the Venetians, the Seljuk Turks, and the Ottoman Empire. The Aegean islands were the site of the original democracies, and its seaways were the means of contact among several diverse civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean.