Rockwave Festival
Rockwave Festival, which takes place in Greece, is considered to be the country’s premier music event. It competes with other major music festivals in Europe, such as Glastonbury in the United Kingdom and Exit in Serbia. Since its inception in 1996, the Rockwave music festival has been held in Athens over the course of a long weekend in the month of July. It calls the huge park on the outskirts of Athens known as Terra Vibe its home (HÅLAND, 2019).
Special buses leave from the center of Athens, but once they get to the grassy expanse of the location, many people prefer to camp, turning this event into a party that goes on around the clock. Attendees may find lots of sources for water, which is essential since it can become rather warm under the Greek summer heat. Food and drink can be purchased from merchants located on the premises.
Athens Epidaurus Festival
The Athens Epidaurus Festival is the most important cultural event that takes place in Greece every summer, and it is held on the slopes of Acropolis as well as in an old theater in the Peloponnese. It is a very enchanted experience to be able to sit in these historic places beneath the stars on beautiful summer evenings while experiencing entertainment that dates back more than two thousand years.
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens is where musical performances, theatrical productions, and dance events take place. That’s correct — you can see live shows of the classics in a building that was constructed in the year 161 CE. The admiring crowds at other events, which may number more than 5000 people, are exposed to contemporary representations of ancient Greek culture.
August Moon Festival
The night of the full moon in August is a time for celebration all over Greece; this is a custom that traces back to ancient Greece and its use of a lunar calendar. Destinations are often historic places that are rarely utilized for concerts in any other context. For example, in Athens, venues like as the Acropolis and the Agora are available for concerts late into the night even though they are not typically used for that purpose (HÅLAND, 2019).
Concerts, live entertainment, poem reading, performances, art exhibits, film screenings, and tours are some of the activities that take place in more than one hundred ancient locations spread around Greece. During stargazing programs, you may even harness the brilliance of Hipparchus of Nicaea, who was considered to be the best astronomer in ancient Greece.
Thessaloniki International Film Festival
During the month of November, the Thessaloniki World Cinema Festival, which has become an important stop on the foreign film circuit, will put the undervalued second city of Greece, Thessaloniki, in the limelight. The program has an emphasis on new, alternative, and independent movies, and it crams more than one hundred films into a schedule that only lasts for ten days. The topics change from year to year and honor the most recent films produced in a variety of countries. The careers of certain moviemakers are examined in depth via the medium of retrospectives and one-off shows.
The festival has garnered praise for its presentation of a considerable number of aesthetically important works that fall beyond the realm of the commercial mainstream. The highly sought Golden Alexander Award, which is considered to be the industry’s most prestigious honor, was presented to Fernanda Valadez in 2020 for her riveting play Identifying Features, which is about immigration (HÅLAND, 2019).
Some of the most devoted cinephiles and filmmakers in the world, such as Joanna Hogg, Wim, Takeshi Kitano, and Wenders, have marked their calendars to attend the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. In addition to the screenings, there are also congressional hearings and workshops on film production that are held throughout the festival. Many of these are conducted by renowned filmmakers.
Orthodox Easter
The traditional festivals, celebrations, and events that take place throughout the year in Greece provide a sense of vibrancy to everyday life in the country and give the party-loving Greeks an opportunity to throw a bash.
Easter in the Orthodox Church is without a doubt the most significant religious holiday and one that should not be missed. Huge celebrations mark the occasion of the religious holiday in almost every municipality, town, and island throughout Greece often one or two weeks following the Christian holiday of Easter (HÅLAND, 2019). On the evening of Easter Saturday, when the rejoicing of the resurrection of Jesus pulls people of all ages out into the streets, the 40 days of lent, together with the fasting that accompanies them and an attitude that is normally reverent, come to a rousing and joyous conclusion. There will be fireworks, parades, song, and dancing as part of the celebration, all of which will reach a peak in the hours after the stroke of midnight.
