Earthquakes in Greece

Greece is the most seismically active country in Europe, sitting at the complex boundary where the African plate subducts beneath the Aegean microplate along the Hellenic Arc. This convergence, combined with the westward extrusion of Anatolia along the North Anatolian Fault, produces frequent earthquakes across the mainland, the Ionian Islands and the Aegean Sea. Crustal stretching in the Gulf of Corinth makes central Greece one of the fastest-extending regions on the continent.

The 1953 Ionian earthquake sequence, culminating in a magnitude 7.2 shock, flattened much of Kefalonia and Zakynthos and reshaped island life for a generation. In 1999 a magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck near Athens, killing 143 people and, remarkably, helping to thaw diplomatic relations with neighbouring Turkey, which had suffered its own devastating quake weeks earlier.