70th Anniversary of the Union of the Dodecanese with Greece

A rose evoking the island of Rhodes, inspired by an ancient coin struck by the city of Rhodes — one of the most distinctive coins of the Dodecanese — with stylised waves radiating outward from the centre. Along the inner edge, the inscription "1948–2018 UNION OF THE DODECANESE WITH GREECE" and "HELLENIC REPUBLIC" (in Greek script) are engraved. To the left, a palmette — the Greek mint's mark — and to the right, the monogram of coin designer Georgios Stamatopoulos.

The Dodecanese - literally "the twelve islands" - actually comprises more than twelve islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea, including Rhodes, Kos and Patmos. Rhodes was for centuries the political and economic centre of the island group: as a major trading city of antiquity, Rhodes minted its own coins with a distinctive iconography, recognised far beyond the Aegean Sea. After centuries under Byzantine, Hospitaller and Ottoman rule, the Dodecanese came under Italian control in 1912 in the course of the Italo-Turkish War and remained so - with a brief German occupation during the Second World War - until 1945. The islands' geopolitical future then remained undecided for a time: Britain administered the Dodecanese provisionally while Greece, the inhabitants and the international community negotiated its final status.

The 1947 Paris Peace Treaty finally settled the matter under international law: Italy ceded the Dodecanese to Greece. On 7 March 1948, the union was formally completed - after almost four decades of administrative separation, the island group returned to the Greek state. For Greece, this step was not only territorially significant but symbolically charged: the Dodecanese is regarded as one of the last regions whose incorporation rounded off the borders of the modern Greek nation-state. In 2018, Greece marked the 70th anniversary of this union with its own 2-euro commemorative coin, honouring an event that remains part of the collective memory of the islands' population to this day.