The ancient city

The Acropolis is the obvious starting point, and the Acropolis Museum below it holds what came off the rock.

But the ancient city spreads well beyond it. The Ancient Agora, at the foot of the north slope, was the marketplace and the centre of public life, and it contains the Temple of Hephaestus — the most complete Doric temple anywhere in Greece, because it was used as a church for centuries and never lost its roof.

Next to it, the Roman Agora holds the Tower of the Winds, an octagonal marble tower that worked as a sundial, water clock and weather vane in the first century BC.

Kerameikos, ten minutes west, was the city's cemetery and the site of its main gate. Grave monuments still stand where they were set up.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus took about seven hundred years to finish. Fifteen of its columns are still standing, and beside them is Hadrian's Arch.

A paved walking route links most of these, running around the base of the Acropolis from Thissio to the Olympieion. Almost no cars, and it takes about half an hour end to end.

The museums

The National Archaeological Museum is the largest collection of Greek antiquities anywhere. It holds the gold mask from Mycenae, the bronze Zeus or Poseidon from Artemision, the Antikythera Mechanism, and the frescoes from Santorini.

Three others are worth planning around. The Museum of Cycladic Art holds the marble figures of the third millennium BC that influenced twentieth-century sculpture. The Benaki Museum covers Greek culture from prehistory to the modern state, across several buildings. The Byzantine and Christian Museum covers the thousand years in between.

Every summer the Athens Epidaurus Festival puts theatre and music into the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Roman theatre on the south slope of the Acropolis.

The oldest quarter

Plaka and Monastiraki, under the north slope of the Acropolis, are the oldest continuously inhabited part of the city. On the northeast side of the Acropolis rock, at the edge of Plaka, is Anafiotika — a cluster of small white houses built in the middle of the nineteenth century by stonemasons and carpenters from the Cyclades, most of them from the island of Anafi, who had come to work on the rebuilding of the city and on King Otto's palace. They built in the style of their own islands, and the quarter still looks like a Cycladic village.

Lycabettus rises 277 metres out of the middle of the city. You can walk up through the pines in about half an hour, or take the funicular. At the top there is a small white chapel and a view over the whole basin to the sea.

The National Garden, behind the parliament building, was laid out in the 1840s as the palace garden. It has ponds, old trees, and enough shade to be usable in August.

Philopappos Hill, opposite the Acropolis, gives the classic view of it, from a marble monument built for a Roman consul.

Beyond the city

Four mountains close in the Athens basin, and two of them are open to walkers: Mount Hymettus to the east, with a network of paths right on the edge of the suburbs, and Mount Parnitha to the north, higher and wilder, where red deer live.

Further out, all within about an hour, are the temple at Sounion, the sanctuary at Eleusis, the plain of Marathon, the wetland and pine forest of Schinias, and the mosaics of Daphni Monastery.

The southern suburbs run along the coast from Piraeus towards Sounion, and this stretch is called the Athens Riviera. It is not a resort coast — it is where Athenians swim.

The beaches begin about fifteen kilometres from the centre and are reached by tram or bus. Glyfada and Voula are organised, with sunbeds and beach bars. Kavouri and Vouliagmeni have clearer water and pine trees. Varkiza is further out and larger.

There are also free public beaches between the organised ones, marked and open to anyone.

Lake Vouliagmeni is not a beach but a warm brackish lake fed by underground springs, at the foot of a cliff.

A separate guide to the beaches of Attica covers the whole coast, including the beaches north and east of the city.

Going out

Athens stays up late, and the evening is a real part of the city rather than an add-on. Psyrri, Gazi and Metaxourgeio, west of the centre, were workshops and gasworks and now hold most of the bars and clubs. Monastiraki and Koukaki have rooftop bars with a view of the lit Acropolis. In summer much of the nightlife moves to the coast.

Open-air cinemas operate from May to September in courtyards and on rooftops across the city, showing films after dark with the sound low enough to hear the neighbours.

On the water and on grass

Marinas along the coast — at Alimos, Flisvos and Zea — are among the largest in the eastern Mediterranean, and Alimos is the main starting point for sailing charters to the Saronic and the Cyclades.

The Glyfada golf course, twelve kilometres from the centre and reachable by tram, is an eighteen-hole championship course and the only one in the Athens area. It hosts the Greek golf federation.

Athens is best understood as a set of neighbourhoods, and each one eats differently.

Kolonaki, on the slope of Lycabettus, is the expensive quarter, with cafés where people sit for hours. Exarcheia is the opposite: political, covered in street art, full of bookshops and cheap tavernas. Koukaki and Pangrati, south and east of the centre, are ordinary residential neighbourhoods that visitors discovered in the last decade, and much of the interesting new cooking is there.

The basic form everywhere is the taverna: shared plates, grilled meat or fish, salads, house wine from the barrel. Around it there are mezedopoleia for small plates, ouzeri and tsipouradika built around a spirit and the food that goes with it, and souvlaki shops that stay open long after everything else has shut.

The Central Market on Athinas Street is where the city's meat, fish and vegetables have been sold since the 1880s, and it is worth walking through even if you buy nothing. Around it are shops selling herbs, spices, nuts and coffee.

Athens now also has a serious fine-dining scene: twelve restaurants in the city hold Michelin stars, one of them two, and three carry a Green Star for sustainability. Until 2026 these were the only starred restaurants in Greece.

And there is the café, which in Athens is a place to sit for two hours over one coffee. Nobody will hurry you.