Macedonia (Greece)
Macedonia (; , "Makedonía" ) is a geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and Greek region, with a population of 2.38 million in 2017. The region is highly mountainous, with most major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Thrace, and sometimes also Thessaly and Epirus, it is part of Northern Greece. It also contains Mount Athos, an autonomous monastic region of Greece.
Macedonia naming dispute
A 22-meter tall statue, "Man on a Horse", depicting Alexander the Great, was erected in 2011 in Skopje, the capital city of the Republic of Macedonia, as part of a historical public arts building campaign. Greece scornfully characterised the effort, with the foreign ministry commenting on the size of the statue as "inversely proportional to seriousness and historical truth". The project received criticism by the European Union, calling it "not helpful" as well as by Skopje architects and ethnic Macedonian academics and politicians commenting on the aesthetic outcome and the semantics of such a move.