Activities in Athens

One of the great pleasures of the Athenian summer is enjoying a movie (and a souvlaki and a beer) alfresco at one of the open-air cinemas. The swankes

The road from central Athens to the sea is lined with open-air clubs that rage all night long to the strains of Euro pop. This glitzy option, where mo

The shores south of Athens are known as the Athenian Riviera, with beaches spanning roughly 25 miles. One of the nicest of these belongs to the Astir

Seeing an ancient Greek tragedy—or Swan Lake, The Magic Flute, or anything, really—performed at the A.D. 160 Herode

This art and history museum is taking over Athens, with a large modern art and architecture annex on Pireos Street near Gazi; a complex of Neoclassica

The nouveaux riches of Athens love anything foreign—cars, TV shows, even coffee (some of Kolonaki’s snootier cafés refuse to serve café frappés, optin

If touring ancient sites all day drives you to drink, bypass the touts luring you into Plaka’s mediocre restaurants and slip into this narrow, 100-yea

Perched on the edge of a cliff, this 444 B.C. temple with 15 still-standing Doric columns was dedicated to the god of the sea (a sort of consolation p

An entire floor of the eight-story flagship bookstore of the publishing giant Eleftheroudakis is devoted to travel books on Greece; another one is exc

Not all of the art in Athens is ancient; this stunningly renovated Neoclassical mansion holds the world’s third largest collection of graphic M. C. Es

If seeing them in the hands of every old man sitting in the kafenion (coffee shop) has mad

Athens’s second most famous rock, this limestone cliff is 908 feet above sea level; imagine the view. You can ride the funicular up to the top ($9) if

One of the most recent naturopathic products to sweep the globe is mastiha, or mast

Perhaps the second most important venue for diligent tourists (after the Acropolis), the recently renovated mammoth museum has the amazing Greek colle

Athens’s New Acropolis Museum opened in 2009 with at least two missions: to display Acropolis artifacts in a modern setting and to regain the missing

You can’t come to Athens and not visit the sacred rock. The world’s most famous acropolis

Arguably the prettiest shop in Plaka, the city’s tourist hotbed, this store and gallery forgoes kitschy souvenirs for ceramic plates from the island o

This is one of Athens’s oldest venues for rembetika, the “Greek blues,” born out of the misery surrounding t

Natural hot springs continually fill this saltwater/mineral-water lake from below, keeping the brilliantly blue waters at a temperature of around 75 d

Rows of beach chairs and umbrellas line this hip, family-friendly, shallow-water beach east of Vouliagmeni. It’s privately owned, which means it has a