Top 20 most important and famous people from Greece

Greece's national poet. He is best known for the Hymn to Liberty

Writer, political thinker and revolutionary, active in the Modern Greek Enlightenment. Pioneer of the Greek War of Independence remembered as a national hero in Greece

Writer, author of Zorba the Greek, Christ Recrucified and The Last Temptation of Christ

Greek-Egyptian poet, journalist, translator and civil servant

Modernist poet, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963

Romantic modernist writer, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979

Scholar founder of modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment

Leader of the Greek national liberation movement. He is noted for his contribution to the expansion of Greece and promotion of liberal-democratic policies. Prime minister of Greece for over 12 years, spanning eight terms between 1910 and 1933

Military officer and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941

Military officer and political leader who ruled Greece as a military dictator from 1967 to 1973

Politician a dominant figure in Greek politics, known for founding the political party PASOK, which he led from 1974 to 1996

Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019

Director of A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, three times winner of Academy Award

Actress famous for her roles in The Guns of Navarone, Zorba the Greek and The Trojan Women

Actress famous for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls, winner of Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1944

Actress, singer, activist, and politician. She received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film Never on Sunday

Composer of The Ballad of Mauthausen, which has been described as the most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust. He was also a politician

Soprano, one of the most influential opera singers of XX century

Tennis player fourth in the ATP ranking

Husband of Queen Elizabeth II