Overview of Athens Attractions

Athens is an amazing city that attracts tourists from all over the world. An overview of the most interesting places of this ancient city is given below.

Athens Acropolis

The Acropolis is the oldest architectural monument of the city and one of the most recognizable landmarks of Greece. It is situated on a hill rising 156 meters.

The hill was first inhabited in the fifth century B.C. A few decades later, temples appeared on it. Most of the antiquities preserved since then have been moved to the Louvre and the British Museum. However, there are still exhibits that continue to be preserved in the Acropolis.

On the hill, tourists can see the Parthenon, the Niki Apteros and the Erechtheion. Other no less famous temples have also become part of the Acropolis.

Official website: odysseus.culture

New Acropolis Museum

The new Acropolis Museum contains more than 14,000 unique artifacts. This structure was built on the site of important archaeological excavations. Every visitor to this attraction in Athens has a view of them, as the floors and ceilings in the museum are made entirely of glass.

Its most interesting exposition is the Parthenon Hall. Here visitors can see not only copies, but also the originals of the sculptures, which at one time were considered the main decorations of the Acropolis.

Official website:issuu.com/theacropolismuseum

Athens Agora

The ancient Agora is located northwest of the Acropolis. It was once a market place. It was also considered the political and cultural center of the city. Today there are regular fairs held here.

Not much has survived on the Agora. There are only the foundations of old buildings. Archaeologists often work in this area in the hope of finding something of interest.

On the site are the remains of the colonnade which belonged to King Attalus and the temple of Hephaestus. On the southern side near the Agora is the rock of the Areopagus.

Official site: odysseus.culture.gr

Temple of Zeus the Olympic

The temple of Zeus the Olympian, although not preserved in its original form to this day, still continues to fascinate residents and visitors to the city. 

The temple was revered by the peoples who believed in Zeus as the supreme god. The decline of the place came after the active spread of Christianity

Fifteen columns remain of the temple at this time. The sixteenth lies nearby. It could not resist the strongest hurricane that struck the city in 1852.

Panathenaic Stadium

The Panathinaikos Stadium is located in the heart of the Greek capital next to the National Garden. This place is the oldest stadium in the world. The structure is built of white marble. In 1896 the first Olympic Games were held here.

In ancient times, the Panathenaic Games were held in the stadium. It was also the site of religious celebrations. The stadium was thoroughly reconstructed immediately after it was discovered during excavations. All the work was done at the expense of Evangelis Zappas, a well-known patron of the arts. With his support, Greek competitions were held in the stadium.

Panathinaikos is used not only for sporting events. It also often hosts various exhibitions that are dedicated to Greek culture.

Official website: www.panathenaicstadium

Byzantine Museum

The Byzantine Museum is located in the Villa of the Duchess de Plezance. The main exhibits of the museum are the icons of the Cretan school of iconography. Most of the exhibits presented in the museum are preserved in good condition.

In front of the building, which contains the Byzantine Museum, there are orange trees and many flowers. The courtyard of the villa is decorated with a fountain, which is recreated from a painting on a mosaic from the monastery of Daphnia.

Official website: www.byzantinemuseum

Temple of Hephaestus or Hephaisteion

Hephaisteion is found on the north-west side of the Ancient Agora. For many centuries the temple had the appearance of an orthodox church. Afterwards it was recognized as a national historical monument, and a museum was set up in it. It was only in the last century that the sanctuary was restored to its original appearance.

The temple of Hephaestus is better preserved than the others. It is built of solid marble. For a long time archaeologists and historians were convinced that the Hephaisteion was built in honor of Theseus. All because his images were on the walls of this attraction of Athens. But when statues of Hephaestus and Athena were found inside the building, experts changed their minds.

National Archaeological Museum of Athens

The National Archaeological Museum is the largest in Greece. It was specially created to store valuable artifacts that were discovered by archaeologists during excavations two centuries ago. After some time other equally important artefacts brought from different cities of Greece were kept here.

The museum has over 11,000 unique exhibits from prehistory to late Antiquity. The building itself is divided into five main expositions, differing from each other by the antiquity of the exhibits and the subject matter. Each of them is available for viewing by all tourists who wish to visit.

Official website: www.namuseum.gr

Church of the Holy Apostles

In the Agora is the Church of the Holy Apostles Solakis. It was built back in the 10th century. This church was recognized as the oldest of the existing Christian churches in Athens.

The church is characterized by its original construction. It looks like a cross-shaped structure with four massive columns supporting a huge dome. This attraction of Athens also has vestibules (pronaos). One of them had to be enlarged over time to accommodate the sarcophagus in the building. It is believed that the sepulchre of the temple was built especially for the patron of the arts who sponsored the construction.

Syntagma or Constitution Square

Syntagma is often called Constitution Square.  On its territory there is a unique monument dedicated to the unknown soldier. Here you can also see members of the National Guard, who perform the duties of the guard. They are all dressed in the national military uniform of Greece. Every hour there is a changing of the guard - this event is very popular with tourists, as it has the look of a colorful performance.

The Monument to the Unknown Soldier on Syntagma was opened in 1932. This event took place during the celebration of Greek Independence Day.

Nicolas P. Goulandris Cycladic Art Museum

The museum was opened in 1986, thanks to a collection of ancient Greek art that for a long time belonged to one of the most influential families of Greece.

The collection began to be assembled back in the 1960s. Nicholas and Dolly, the owners of the expensive artifacts, got permission from the Greek government to do so. The collection included very rare relics, thanks to which it attracted the attention of scientists. After Nicholas' death, it was handed over to the government. It was then decided to create a museum on the basis of these exhibits.

The main collection of the museum is divided into three parts, which differ from each other by their themes. The museum was created to introduce people to the ancient culture of Cyprus and the Aegean Sea. Today, lectures and seminars are held within the walls of this building. People come here to take part in fascinating projects and research.

Official website: www.cycladic.gr

National Garden in Athens

In the center of the city there is a luxurious park, which is noted in the guidebooks as the National Garden. Many people call it the Royal Garden because the garden was planted in honor of Queen Amalia. This event took place in 1939. The attention of tourists in this park attracts not only picturesque nature and dozens of amazing plants. Among them, ancient columns and mosaics, which have slightly lost their original appearance, are well positioned. In the south of the park are busts of famous poets who glorified Greece.

Trees and bushes of the garden surround the Parliament building on almost all sides. There are guards constantly on duty next to it.

There are more than 15,000 different species of plants are grown in the national garden. The park is constantly cared for, so it does not lose its attractive appearance. The garden has a live corner. The visitors of this place can observe the birds and animals through a mesh fence.

Official website: www.cityofathens.gr

Kesariani Monastery

To the east of Athens is located the Monastery of Kesariani, hidden from view by a high stone fence.

The true date of the foundation of the monastery is not known to anyone. Archaeologists suggest that it could have been built in the XI century. The shrine now remains the property of the Orthodox Church. For a long time the monastery was considered the most important cultural and religious center for the Greeks.

The structure has the form of a cross-shaped temple, the dome of which is supported by four Ionic columns. They are the remains of a sanctuary that existed in this place back in antiquity.

Official website: odysseus.culture.gr

Hadrian's Library

In 132 BC, Emperor Hadrian issued a decree to build the library, which today is an important historical monument of Greece. It is located to the north of the Acropolis.

After Hadrian's Library was completely built, it became one of the most beautiful buildings in Athens. It had a courtyard in which there was a swimming pool. The library was surrounded by a number of columns around its perimeter.

Thousands of valuable books were kept in the library. The library had reading rooms and lecture rooms. Near the library, during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, there was a market place. There were several churches in the area that have not survived to this day.

Official website: odysseus.culture.gr

Stoa of Attalos

Stoa of Attalos (also spelled Attalus) is covered walkway or portico. It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon, who ruled between 159 BC and 138 BC. It is located in the Agora of Athens. Limestone and marble were used as building material.

The Herul tribe destroyed the structure in 267. Its rebuilding was not begun until 1950. The Rockefeller family paid the entire cost of the work. Since then the structure has served as the Agora Museum.

Parthenon

The Parthenon is an ancient temple which is the main symbol of Athens and Greece as a whole. Together with the other structures that includ in the Acropolis of Athens, the monument is part of the World Heritage List. The Parthenon is beautifully visible from anywhere in the city.

The idea of building the sanctuary came about 2.5 thousand years ago to the Athenian reformer Pericles. Marble, ivory, gold, and cypress wood were used to build the Parthenon. Many thousands of slaves were involved in the construction.

Official website: odysseus.culture.gr

Erechtheion

The Erechtheion is one of the main temples in ancient Athens. It was built in the 5th century BC and is considered one of the most valuable architectural monuments of the Greek capital. Unlike other structures of antiquity, the Erechtheion has unusual architecture for those times. It is relatively small in size and resembles more a dwelling house than a sanctuary. The asymmetry of its facade is due to the relief of the ground, as well as to the abundance of sanctuaries that were there in that times. The temple is Ionic in style with the eastern part dedicated to the goddess Athena and the western part to Poseidon. During Byzantine times, there was a Christian chapel within its walls, but in the 17th century it was badly damaged by Venetian troops.

Official website: odysseus.culture.gr

Odeon of Herodes Atticus

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus  is a stone Roman theatre structure located on the south-west slope of the Acropolis of Athens. The building was completed in AD 161 and then renovated in 1950.

It was built in AD 161 by Herodes Atticus in memory of his Roman wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla. It was originally a steep-sloped theatre with a three-story stone front wall and a wooden roof made of expensive cedar of Lebanon timber. It was used as a venue for music concerts with a capacity of 5,000. It lasted intact until it was destroyed and left in ruins by the Heruli in AD 267.

The audience stands and the orchestra (stage) were restored using Pentelic marble in the 1950s. Since then it has been the main venue of the Athens Festival, which runs from May through October each year, featuring a variety of acclaimed Greek as well as International performances.

Official website: odysseus.culture.gr

Theatre of Dionysus

The Theatre of Dionysus is an ancient Greek theatre in Athens. It is built on the south slope of the Acropolis hill, originally part of the sanctuary of Dionysus Eleuthereus (Dionysus the Liberator).

The theatre reached its fullest extent in the fourth century BC under the epistates of Lycurgus when it would have had a capacity of up to 17,000, and was in continuous use down to the Roman period. The theatre then fell into decay in the Byzantine era and was not identified, excavated and restored to its current condition until the nineteenth century.

The entire history of world theater was once born on this scene - the works of the greatest representatives of ancient Greek drama and literature - Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes and others - were presented here to the judgment of the audience.

Tower of the Winds

At the foot of the Acropolis is an elegant octagonal structure from the 1st century BC. It is  an ancient weather station, or Tower of the Winds.

The 12-meter marble tower is crowned by a conical ceramic roof, and the top was once a weathervane in the form of a newt, a mythical creature with a wand in his hand, indicating the direction of the wind. All corners of the tower are oriented strictly to the sides of the world. Inside the tower there was a clepsydra, a water clock, where time intervals were measured by drops flowing from a special vessel. The tower had another clock for sunny days, which allowed to know the time by the position of the shadow falling on it. Eight bas-reliefs depicting allegories of the winds have survived to this day; by looking at them you could tell what wind was blowing and what to expect from the weather.

Kerameikos

Kerameikos is an area of Athens, located to the north-west of the Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient city walls, on both sides of the Dipylon Gate and by the banks of the Eridanos River. It was the potters' quarter of the city, from which the English word "ceramic" is derived, and was also the site of an important cemetery and numerous funerary sculptures erected along the Sacred Way, a road from Athens to Eleusis.

Benaki Museum

The Benaki Museum, established and endowed in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the Benakis family mansion in downtown Athens, Greece. The museum houses Greek works of art from the prehistorical to the modern times, an extensive collection of Asian art, hosts periodic exhibitions and maintains a state-of-the-art restoration and conservation workshop. Although the museum initially housed a collection that included Islamic art, Chinese porcelain and exhibits on toys, its 2000 re-opening led to the creation of satellite museums that focused on specific collections, allowing the main museum to focus on Greek culture over the span of the country's history. This Museum in Athens houses over 100,000 artifacts from Greek history and showcases the many eras, civilizations and cultures which have influenced the development of Greece. Spread over a number of locations, the museum ranks among Greece’s foremost cultural institutions.

Official website: www.benaki.org

Numismatic Museum

The Numismatic Museum of Athens (Greek: Νομισματικό Μουσείο Αθηνών) is one of the most important museums in Greece and it houses a collection of over 500,000 coins, medals, gems, weights, stamps and related artefacts from 1400BC to modern times. The collection constitutes one of the richest in the world. The museum itself is housed in the mansion of the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, formally known as Iliou Melathron.

Athens War Museum

The Athens War Museum, established on July 18, 1975, is the museum of the Greek Armed Forces. Its purpose is the exhibition of weapon artifacts and the relevant research in the history of war. It covers the history of war in all ages. The museums' collections include the collection of the Greek Army, with artifacts from other civilizations such as Ancient China and Ancient Japan.

Official website: www.warmuseum.gr

Battleship George Averof

Georgios Averof  is a modified Pisa-class armored cruiser built in Italy for the Royal Hellenic Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The ship served as the Greek flagship during most of the first half of the century. Although popularly known as a battleship in Greek, she is in fact an armored cruiser, the only ship of this type still in existence.

Athens Academy of Sciences

The Academy of Athens is Greece's national academy, and the highest research establishment in the country. It was established in 1926, with its founding principle traces back to the historical Academy of Plato, and operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. The Academy's main building is one of the major landmarks of Athens.

Official website: www.academyofathens.gr

Guard of Honor at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) is a war memorial located in Syntagma Square in Athens, in front of the Old Royal Palace. It is a cenotaph dedicated to the Greek soldiers killed during war. It was sculpted between 1930 and 1932 by sculptor Fokion Rok.

The tomb is guarded by the Evzones of the Presidential Guard.

Every hour at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier there is a change of guard, and on Sundays there is a special ceremony - with the sound of the orchestra goes the entire regiment of 120 guardsmen who march in parade uniforms.

Church of Panagia Kapnikarea

The Church of Panagia Kapnikarea is a Greek Orthodox church and one of the oldest churches in Athens.

It is estimated that the church was built some time in the 11th century, perhaps around 1050. As it was common with the early Christian churches, this was built over an ancient Greek temple dedicated to the worship of a goddess, possibly Athena or Demeter. When King Otto I, King of the Kingdom of Greece, brought the Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze to draw the new city plan of Athens, the church was considered for demolition and it was the King of Bavaria, Ludwig I who objected the decision and saved the church.

Daphni Monastery

Daphni  is an eleventh-century Byzantine monastery eleven kilometers (6.8 miles) northwest of central Athens in the suburb of Chaidari, south of Athinon Avenue (GR-8A). It is situated near the forest of the same name, on the Sacred Way that led to Eleusis.

The Daphni Monastery was founded towards the end of the sixth century A.D. on the site of the Sanctuary of Apollo which had been desecrated by the Goths in 395. The Sanctuary of Apollo was built in the Ionic style using the thinnest and smallest columns. The columns stand on a base with an ornamental scroll at the top. A few of the columns of the temple have been preserved. One of the four Ionic columns of the ancient Sanctuary of Apollo remains at the site, as it was re-used in the Daphni Monastery.

The Daphni Monastery, along with the famous monasteries of Hosios Loukas near Delphi and Nea Moni on the island of Chios, are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites for their significant historical and architectural value. These monasteries are famed as masterpieces of middle Byzantine architecture, and are especially noted for their sumptuous interior gold-ground mosaics.

Official website: odysseus.culture.gr

Mount Lycabettus

Mount Lycabettus is a Cretaceous limestone hill in the Athens. At 277 meters (908 feet) above sea level, its summit is the highest point in Central Athens and pine trees cover its base. The name also refers to the residential neighbourhood immediately below the east of the hill.

The hill is a tourist destination and can be ascended by the Lycabettus Funicular, a funicular railway which climbs the hill from a lower terminus at Kolonaki (The railway station can be found at Aristippou street). At its two peaks are the 19th century Chapel of St. George, a theatre, and a restaurant.

Mythologically, Lycabettus is credited to Athena, who created it when she dropped a limestone mountain she had been carrying from the Pallene peninsula for the construction of the Acropolis after the box holding Erichthonius was opened.

Philopappa Hill

Plaka is the old historical neighborhood of Athens, clustered around the northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis, and incorporating labyrinthine streets and neoclassical architecture. Plaka is built on top of the residential areas of the ancient town of Athens. It is known as the "Neighborhood of the Gods" due to its proximity to the Acropolis and its many archaeological sites.

Monastiraki Flea Market

Shopping in Athens is a favorite pastime for tourists and Athenians and one of the best places to buy just about anything is the Flea Market at Monastiraki. OK. It is not really a flea market except maybe on Sunday when some of the stores close and people bring tables and carpets and sell all kinds of stuff from junk to antiques. The rest of the week it is more like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul though not so grand and not so bizarre. Most of the shops are pretty conventional and sell the same stuff you find in the tourist shops on the islands, some of it made in Greece and some made in China or other cheap labor countries. You will find the same designs on GREECE T-shirts as you saw in Aruba or Mexico, as well as some you might actually classify as art or somehow unique. There are good jewelry store with handmade gold and silver pieces and fake jewelry stores with "handmade" gold and silver pieces, and most people won't be able to tell the difference.

Attica Zoological Park

Attica Park, officially Attica Zoological Park (AZP), is a private zoo located in the suburb of Spata, approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Athens, Greece. It is the only zoo in Greece. The zoo is home to more than 1,500 animals representing 220 species, in an area of 20-hectares (49 acres). It is open 365 days a year.