Euro banknotes are shared across the euro area. Greece uses every national coin face to tell a different chapter, moving from Athenian democracy and seafaring to independence and modern statehood.
Paper money
Euro notes follow an easy architectural colour ladder - grey €5, red €10, blue €20, orange €50, green €100 and yellow €200 - wherever you spend them in Europe.
The euro banknote theme is imagined European architecture rather than real monuments: windows and gateways move from classical to modern styles, while bridges on the reverse suggest connection. Cash by Country artwork is an original, simplified interpretation and is not legal tender.
The whole pocket museum
Three ships make a timeline
The 1 cent trireme comes from the age of Athenian democracy. The 2 cent corvette recalls the War of Independence, and the 5 cent tanker brings the sequence into modern Greek shipping. Read together, the small copper values sail from antiquity to the present.
Three people built three kinds of freedom
Rigas Fereos represents the Greek Enlightenment and a vision of Balkan liberation. Ioannis Capodistrias became the first governor after independence. Eleftherios Venizelos is linked to reform, diplomacy and the modernisation of the state.
The owl was money before the euro
The EUR 1 design copies the owl from an Athenian four-drachma coin of the fifth century BC. It is both a symbol of Athena and a direct visual conversation between one of antiquity's best-known coins and today's shared currency.
Europa gives the continent its name
The EUR 2 coin takes its scene from a third-century mosaic in Sparta. Zeus appears as a bull carrying Europa, the mythological figure whose name became Europe's.
Shared notes, unmistakably Greek change
A Greek EUR 20 note is the same banknote used throughout the euro area. The local storytelling sits on the coins. Use our original note illustrations for denomination and colour, then check real cash by touch, watermark, security thread and hologram.