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.
History of the Republic of Macedonia
The region was captured by the Kingdom of Serbia during First Balkan War of 1912 and was subsequently annexed to Serbia in the post-war peace treaties. It had no administrative autonomy and was called "Južna Srbija" ("Southern Serbia") or "Stara Srbija" ("Old Serbia"). It was occupied by Kingdom of Bulgaria between 1915 and 1918. After the First World War, the Kingdom of Serbia joined the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929, the kingdom was officially renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and was divided into provinces called banovinas. The territory of Vardar Banovina had Skopje as its capital and it included what eventually became the modern Republic of Macedonia.