21 Unmissable Things to Do in Athens Right Now

Athens doesn't ease you in gently. From the moment you clear the airport and the city sprawls into view — terracotta rooftops, the Acropolis floating above it all like a limestone mirage — you understand you're somewhere that has been doing this for a very long time. Two and a half thousand years of civilisation have left their mark on every street corner, every taverna, every crumbling neoclassical façade. But Athens in the present tense is not a museum. It's chaotic, creative, occasionally maddening, and utterly alive. Whether you're here for a long weekend or a full week, narrowing down the things to do in Athens requires a certain ruthlessness. This list does that work for you.

Walk the Acropolis at the Right Time of Day

There's no escaping it, nor should you try. The Acropolis remains one of the genuinely transformative travel experiences on the planet — but timing is everything. Arrive at opening time (8am in summer) or in the final ninety minutes before closing, and you'll find the crowds thin enough to actually hear the wind coming off the Saronic Gulf. The Parthenon, even in its scaffolded, partially reconstructed state, stops you cold. The quality of light on Pentelic marble at golden hour is something photographers chase their entire careers. Book tickets in advance through the official Greek Ministry of Culture e-ticketing portal — queues without a booking are punishing in peak season.

Spend a Morning at the Acropolis Museum

Directly below the sacred rock sits one of Europe's finest purpose-built archaeological museums, and it deserves far more than a cursory hour. The Acropolis Museum is architecturally stunning — glass floors reveal active excavations beneath your feet as you walk between galleries. The top floor's Parthenon Gallery is designed to align precisely with the monument visible through its vast windows: original frieze carvings on one side, cast replicas filling the gaps where the Elgin Marbles remain in London on the other. That deliberate absence is one of the most eloquent arguments in modern museum-making.

Get Lost in the Monastiraki Flea Market

Every Sunday, the streets around Monastiraki Square descend into glorious, fragrant chaos. Vendors spread Byzantine icons, mid-century cameras, embroidered linens, Ottoman coffee pots, and inexplicable quantities of military surplus gear across pavements and makeshift stalls. Serious antique shops line Ifaistou Street year-round, but the Sunday market spills far beyond into Avyssinias Square, where the energy is pure Athens — loud, unhurried, and entirely on its own terms. Bring cash and a willingness to barter.

Eat Your Way Through the Central Market

The Varvakios Agora on Athinas Street is not sanitised for tourist consumption. This is where Athenian restaurant owners source their lamb, where fishmongers shout the morning's catch, where the smell of blood and brine hits you before you've even opened the door. It's confronting, vivid, and completely essential. The covered meat hall dates to 1886; the adjacent fish market is arguably even more theatrical. If you have a strong stomach and a curious mind, breakfast on fresh oysters and a glass of ouzo at one of the market's old-school tavernas — a tradition that has been going since the early hours of the morning for well over a century. For a deeper dive into Athens' culinary landscape, our self-guided Athens food tour guide maps the full edible journey across the city's best neighbourhoods.

Climb Lycabettus Hill at Dusk

The Acropolis gets all the attention, but Lycabettus Hill — at 277 metres, the highest point in Athens — offers the more complete panorama. On a clear evening, you can see all the way to the Aegean and across to the mountains of the Peloponnese. Take the funicular from Kolonaki if your legs are reluctant; walk up through the pine trees if they're not. The small chapel of Agios Georgios at the summit is picture-postcard pretty, and the outdoor theatre hosts concerts through summer. The café at the top is overpriced but forgivable — you're paying for one of the great city views in Europe.

Explore the Ancient Agora

While everyone queues for the Parthenon, the Ancient Agora — the commercial and civic heart of classical Athens — tends to be comparatively quiet. Socrates taught here. Democracy was argued into existence on these stones. The reconstructed Stoa of Attalos houses a superb museum, and the Temple of Hephaestus (the Hephaisteion) is arguably the best-preserved ancient Greek temple anywhere in the world, yet receives a fraction of the footfall of its more famous neighbour on the hill above. Give it two unhurried hours.

Wander Through Anafiotika

Tucked into the northern slope of the Acropolis, Anafiotika is the most improbable neighbourhood in Athens. A cluster of whitewashed Cycladic-style houses — built in the 19th century by workers from the island of Anafi who were brought to Athens to construct the new capital — clings to the rock as if it's been there since antiquity. Narrow stepped lanes, pots of geraniums, cats sleeping on warm stone walls. It takes perhaps twenty minutes to walk through entirely, but the contrast with the city roaring away below is disorienting in the best possible way.

Visit the National Archaeological Museum

If you have any interest at all in ancient Greek civilisation — and if you've made it to Athens, you presumably do — then the National Archaeological Museum is non-negotiable. This is the greatest collection of ancient Greek artefacts on earth, full stop. The gold death masks from Mycenae, the bronze Poseidon (or Zeus — scholars still argue) caught mid-throw, the Antikythera Mechanism's extraordinary fragments: budget a minimum of three hours and accept you'll still leave feeling you've only scratched the surface.

Have Coffee the Athenian Way

Athens takes its coffee more seriously than almost any other European capital. The frappé — instant coffee, water, and evaporated milk shaken until frothy, served over ice — was invented here in 1957 and remains the city's default caffeine delivery system. More recently, the freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino have become the drinks of choice for younger Athenians. The ritual matters as much as the drink: a single frappé can justify an entire afternoon at a pavement table in Kolonaki or Exarchia, watching the city perform itself. Don't rush it. This is not Italian espresso culture — nobody is standing at a bar.

Discover Kerameikos

One of Athens' most undervisited archaeological sites, Kerameikos was the city's ancient cemetery and potter's district. It's hauntingly beautiful — ancient grave stelae rising from the ground amid overgrown grass, a stream (the Eridanos) still running through it. The on-site museum is small but excellent. More importantly, it's the kind of place where you can actually sit quietly with antiquity, without a crowd jostling for selfie angles. The surrounding neighbourhood has quietly become one of Athens' most interesting, with independent bars and galleries opening up in former industrial spaces.

Take a Day Trip to Cape Sounion

Perched on a headland 70 kilometres south of Athens, the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion is one of those sights that photographs cannot adequately prepare you for. Ancient columns against a sheer drop to the Aegean below; Byron carved his name into the marble here in 1810 (you can still find it, though we'd suggest not following his example). The sunset from this promontory ranks among the finest in Greece. If you're planning your wider movements around the city, our guide to day trips from Athens covers Sounion alongside eleven other exceptional escapes — from Delphi to the islands of the Saronic Gulf.

Eat Souvlaki Standing Up

There is a correct way to eat souvlaki in Athens, and it involves standing at a counter with a paper wrap in your hand. Sit-down souvlaki exists, but the truly great versions come from small, unpretentious spots — often with fluorescent lighting and a single harried cook — that have been feeding the same neighbourhood for decades. Pork or chicken, tomato, onion, tzatziki, paprika, wrapped in a warm pita that's been pressed on the grill. In Monastiraki, in Psyrri, in Exarchia: you will never go more than three minutes without encountering an excellent option. Trust your nose.

See Athens from a Rooftop Bar

The rooftop bar as architectural phenomenon reaches its logical apex in Athens, where the Acropolis provides an almost unfair backdrop for an evening drink. The A for Athens hotel bar in Monastiraki is perhaps the most iconic perch — the Parthenon appears to hover just above the rim of your wine glass. For something slightly less Instagrammed, the rooftop at the Electra Metropolis hotel on Mitropoleos Square offers equally spectacular views with more elbow room. Either way, arrive before sunset and plan to stay for several hours.

Explore Exarchia

Exarchia is Athens' most politically charged neighbourhood — famously anarchist, genuinely bohemian, and home to the best independent bookshops, live music venues, and hole-in-the-wall eateries in the city. It gets an undeservedly threatening reputation in some travel guides; in reality, it's lively and fascinating, particularly in the evenings when the central square fills up and the bars spill onto the pavements. The National Archaeological Museum is on its western edge, which gives you a convenient excuse to extend your afternoon into dinner. Come without expectations and leave pleasantly surprised.

Visit the Benaki Museum

The Benaki Museum in Kolonaki houses one of the finest private collections in Greece — Byzantine icons, Ottoman artefacts, traditional Greek costumes, jewellery spanning four millennia, and an extraordinary collection tracing the country's modern political history. The neoclassical building itself is worth the visit. The rooftop café is excellent. Unlike the state museums, the Benaki has a gift shop that actually stocks things you'll want to buy.

Walk the Unification of Archaeological Sites Promenade

One of modern Athens' genuine urban achievements is the Archaeological Promenade — a largely car-free pedestrian walkway that links the major ancient sites in a roughly 4-kilometre loop through the city centre. Starting from Thissio, it runs past Kerameikos, under the Acropolis via Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, past Hadrian's Arch, and around to the Panathenaic Stadium. Do it in the morning before the heat builds. It's one of the great urban walks in Europe.

See a Performance at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus

Built in 161 AD and still fully operational, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus hosts the Athens Epidaurus Festival through summer — opera, classical music, dance, and theatre performed beneath the lit Acropolis. Seeing a live performance here is a genuinely unrepeatable experience. Check the programme through the Athens Epidaurus Festival website and book well ahead for the most popular productions.

Visit Hadrian's Library and the Roman Agora

Often overshadowed by their ancient Greek counterparts, the Roman-era monuments in the heart of Athens are remarkable in their own right. Hadrian's Library — built by the Emperor Hadrian in 132 AD to house his vast collection of scrolls — is a monumental ruin right in the middle of the city, steps from Monastiraki Square. The adjacent Roman Agora contains the Tower of the Winds, an extraordinary first-century BC marble structure that functioned as a clocktower, weather vane, and sundial simultaneously. Classical Athens gets all the glory, but Rome left its mark here too.

Catch the Changing of the Guard at Syntagma

The Evzone guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the Hellenic Parliament are an Athens institution. In their white fustanella skirts and pom-pommed shoes — a costume that manages to look simultaneously ancient and theatrical — they stand motionless for an hour before performing one of the most distinctive changing-of-the-guard ceremonies in the world. The full ceremonial change happens every Sunday at 11am, when an entire company of Evzones marches down from the Evzone barracks. It's solemn, oddly moving, and worth arranging your Sunday morning around.

Navigate the City by Metro

Athens' metro is cleaner and more efficient than its chaotic street-level traffic would suggest possible, and it doubles as an archaeological experience. Stations on Lines 2 and 3 display finds excavated during construction — pottery, coins, human remains, entire sections of ancient road, presented in glass cases on the platforms. Syntagma station is the most impressive, with a full cross-section of Athenian strata visible through a glass wall. The STASY Athens Urban Transport website covers routes, fares, and the city's integrated ticketing system across metro, tram, and bus.

Plan Your Time in Athens Properly

The greatest mistake most first-time visitors make is attempting to see everything in a single breathless pass. Athens rewards patience and strategic thinking. If you're working out how to sequence the city's highlights across a few days, our perfect three-day Athens itinerary provides a day-by-day structure that balances the ancient, the contemporary, and the culinary without leaving you exhausted by noon on day one.

The Athens You'll Actually Remember

The things to do in Athens that lodge deepest in the memory are rarely the ones that appear at the top of every generic list. Yes, you must see the Acropolis — but what you'll actually talk about afterwards is the frappé you nursed for two hours watching an argument unfold on a Psyrri pavement, or the way the city looked from Lycabettus just as the lights came on across the basin, or the vendor in Monastiraki who insisted on teaching you three Greek phrases before agreeing to sell you anything. Athens is a city that demands active participation. Come with curiosity, leave the itinerary slightly loose, and let the oldest city in Europe show you how it's done.