200 Years of the Greek Constitution

The Asclepion — the ancient Greek sanctuary of healing at Epidaurus — with a statue of Asclepius, the god of medicine, in the foreground. Above it, the issuing state "ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ"; to either side, the years "1822" and "2022"; and below, the commemorative inscription "TO ΠΡΩΤΟ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚO ΣYΝTAΓMA", the palmette of the Greek mint, and the coin designer's monogram.

In January 1822, the First National Assembly of the Greeks adopted the first constitution of modern Greece in Epidaurus — in the midst of an ongoing war of independence against the Ottoman Empire that had been shaking the country since 1821. This document, known as the Constitution of Epidaurus, was remarkable for its time: it proclaimed popular sovereignty, guaranteed personal freedoms and laid down the basic structure of a parliamentary state. Epidaurus was not chosen at random as the venue — the site in the northeastern Peloponnese had been regarded since antiquity as an important cultural and religious centre of Greece, lending the act symbolic weight.

The 1822 constitution marks the beginning of a long Greek constitutional history that extends to today's constitution of 1975. Politically, the document was short-lived — internal power struggles and the dynamics of the war of independence quickly led to revisions — but as the founding act of the modern Greek state, it holds lasting significance. Greece finally achieved internationally recognised independence in 1830; the tradition of constitutional thinking that began in 1822 decisively shaped the country's state development. With the 2022 2-euro commemorative coin, Greece marks the 200th anniversary of this constitutional moment.