Armed with sabers and pistols, the local residents of the Peloponnese town of Kalavrita don the costume associated with the fighters of the war of independence and stage a re-enactment of the rebellion against their Ottoman occupiers in the 19th century. This is one of many pivotal events, which would lead to independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, after some 400 years, on March 25.
The importance of this milestone year, this milestone anniversary, is that the country has a message; it speaks about the rebirth of the country. Greece emerged from the biggest bailout in economic history in 2018 after years of painful austerity that drove it deep into poverty. One in two young Greeks was unemployed and more than half a million people left the country to find work abroad.
Reuters reports that Greece was under Ottoman rule for nearly 400 years since Ottoman Turks invaded what was then Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1453.
Scattered uprisings in 1821 escalated into a full-scale war which - helped by the intervention of Britain, France and Russia - finally resulted in the establishment of an independent kingdom of Greece in 1832.