Balkanology  ::  Explore Southeast Europe

The Rough Guide to Greece  (12th edition published May 2008)

This is where it all began for Rough Guides - their first ever publication was a guide to Greece. As you would expect, this is a very detailed guide, which is great so long as you don't mind having to carry around almost a thousand pages.

Greece - The Lonely Planet Country Guide  (8th edition published March 2008) - Paul Hellander et al

A fairly typical Lonely Planet guide, with clear maps and well-organised listings. Less detailed than the Rough Guide, and therefore more compact. If you are travelling in off season, don't put any trust in the opening hours stated in the guide, which I found to bear no relation to reality. Presumably that's because they give summer opening hours, although this was not made clear.

Time Out Athens  (published Nov 2007)

I haven't used this particular guide, but Time Out's city guides are usually reliable.

In Your Pocket Athens

This is one of IYP's newest ventures, but the format will be familiar to fans of their guides to Eastern Europe cities. Available in Athens or as a free PDF download from the website.

Roumeli - Travels in Northern Greece - Patrick Leigh Fermor

Such is the individuality of the Greeks that the country is really made up of eight million one-man splinter-groups reluctantly forced into a series of temporary coalitions.

Exploring a rural Greece that was already disappearing fast in the 1960s, the author dines with lonely monks in Meteora, tracks down nomadic Vlachs and Sarakatsáns, and depicts Greek life as the result of a constant struggle between the Byzantine and Hellenic aspects of the Greek psyche.

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 - Mark Mazower

National histories generally have clearly defined heroes and villains, but what would a history look like where these roles were blurred and confused? Can one shape an account of the city's past which manages to reconcile the continuities in its shape and fabric with the radical discontinuities - the deportations, evictions, forced resettlements and genocide - which it has also experienced?

After summing up all of Balkan history in 150 pages in his book The Balkans, Mazower dedicates 500 pages to a single city. Thessaloniki's story is a complex and fascinating one, and Mazower tells it beautifully. Warmly recommended to anyone planning to visit the city, and anyone with an interest in the Balkans.