Major Places of Ancient Greece
This map displays the ancient Greek cities, settlements, places of interest, and centers of influence across the classical world, spanning a multitude of historical eras and modern countries.
Click on each rectangle to see a larger view of the corresponding area (note: gray areas contain no Ancient Greek places of interest and are not active on this map).
Ancient Greek Places in Satellite View
Map Legend
Major
Minor
Era
Spans multiple eras
Paleolithic/Mesolithic/Neolithic 8000-3000 BCE
Bronze age site 3000-1000 BCE
Dark age/Archaic 1000-480 BCE
Classical 480-323 BCE
Hellenistic 323-146 BCE
Late Hellenistic/Roman 146+ BCE
This interactive map utilizes Google Maps which offers considerable landscape accuracy, but with major limitations (i.e. it does not display place names unless clicked. Consequently this map is no longer updated.
Clicking on each placemark on the Google Maps invokes a “pop-up” window that contains the name and more information about the ancient Greek place you clicked on.
Click here to see Ancient Greek places on Google Earth. This interface is considerably slower, but offers oblique views of the satellite images, and reveals the place names. However, it too has limitations (i.e. it disables the hyperlinks in placemarks). So, this map is no longer updated.
Accuracy of Placemarks
In the Google Maps and Earth versions above, the major and minor cities are classified based on the certainty of location. You will find these designations in the pop-up window after clicking on each map place:
Accurate Placemarks: If neither “approximate” nor “general” appear in the pop-up window, the placemark indicates the exact location on the map of the ancient Greek place. Most often, the ruins of the place are visible in satellite view under or near the placemark after zooming in. By “accurate” is meant “as accurately as possible”. While the placemark is located on the ancient excavations, the excavated ruins could be a small part of the actual ancient location that might have relocated several times in the area during the past 4 millennia.
“Approximate Location” The placemark is on the most commonly accepted location based on at least three verified sources, but no ruins or other visual evidence can be seen on the map. They should be considered accurate within the vicinity of the pin on the map.
“General Location” means that the particular ancient Greek place cannot be pinpointed specifically, but instead it spans the general area around the placemark. Most often in this case a modern city covers the ancient site.
“Probable Location” means that the exact location of a known place could not be accurately pinpointed on the map. The placemark is placed on the most likely location based on limited unverified sources.
While satellite imagery offers extraordinary accuracy of the contemporary topography and most modern maps reflect this accuracy, the reader should be cautioned that ancient landscape, and especially the coastline might have been considerably different than today. Good examples of this fact are the locations of Troy, Miletos, and Thermopylae. The ancient places existed next to the coast or a large harbor while today they appear landlocked. In several such cases, I have drawn the ancient coastline after considerable research, and I hope to add more in the future.