From the terracotta and ocher of the Ionian Islands to the brilliant blue and white of the Aegean, the beautiful villages of Greece and its islands are incomparable. The variety of village life and building springs from a multitude of histories and influences, yet these villages are all, in their separate ways, quintessentially Greek. Here, then, are the loveliest villages created by the indomitable Greek spirit, all set in a landscape of overwhelming magnificence. We travel in the mountains of the mainland and the Pelion peninsula, land of the mythical Centaurs. Stone-walls and overhanging wood-framed balconies betray a Turkish influence. In the southern Peloponnese are the Maniot villages and their characteristic tower houses, built by warring families the better to pursue their vendettas. From north to south through the mainland and the Peloponnese, from west to east through the islands, the mixture of intimacy and grandeur continues. The Ionian Islands are home to belfried churches, pitched tile roofs, porticoes and colonnades, testimonies to years of Venetian rule. In contrast the flat-roofed white houses of the Cyclades, startling against the blue Aegean Sea, seem to express the very essence of Greece. Other islands mirror an international trading and shipping tradition such as Chios whose substantial country mansions were left by the Genoese.