Famous people who grew up or lived in Greece

Alexander the Great

📍 Royal Palace of Pella, Pella, Central Macedonia 59035, Greece

I grew up in the royal palace at Pella, a city my father Philip II transformed from a modest settlement into the greatest capital in Greece. The palace was vast — its mosaic floors…

Leonidas I

📍 Sparta, Laconia, Greece

Sparta was not like other Greek cities. There were no great temples to impress visitors, no grand public buildings, no city walls — we considered our soldiers our walls. I grew up as all…

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk1881–1938

📍 Atatürk's Birthplace, İslahhane Sokağı 17, 54621 Thessaloniki, Greece

I was born Mustafa in 1881 in Thessaloniki — then part of the Ottoman Empire, now in Greece — in a modest house in the Jewish quarter of a cosmopolitan Mediterranean port city. Thessaloniki…

Pericles

📍 Agora of Athens, Monastiraki, Athens, Attica 105 55, Greece

I led Athens during its golden age in the fifth century BC, and the city I served was also the city that formed me. I was born around 495 BC into the Alcmaeonid family — one of Athens' most…

Plato387 BC–347 BC

📍 Plato's Academy Park, Akadimia Platonos, 104 42 Athens, Greece

I was born into an aristocratic family in Athens and grew up expecting a life in politics. Then I met Socrates, and spent my youth following him through the marketplace, watching him…

Prince Philip1921–1922

📍 Mon Repos, Corfu, Greece

I was born on the dining-room table at Mon Repos, a neoclassical villa set in woods on the edge of Corfu town, in June 1921 — a prince of Greece and Denmark, the youngest child and only son…

Socrates469 BC–399 BC

📍 Ancient Agora of Athens, Adrianou 24, 105 55 Athens, Greece

I was the son of a stonemason and a midwife, from the district of Alopeke just south of Athens. My father, Sophroniscus, taught me his trade, and for many years I worked stone. My mother…