Exploring Athens
Here is a handy guide with maps and tags that includes well-known places, but also hidden secrets of the city of Athens and its 3.000 years of history. Here the past meets contemporary living. Venues, attractions, monuments, archaeological sites are here for you to explore. The tag list on the right will make things easier for you to find out what you are interested in visiting.
Choose a tag and the content will be filtered accordingly. The tag list and content are continuously updated with new stuff.
Staying at AthensFlat vacation rentals you take advantage of its convenient location, Syntagma square. Most places are within walking distance. Our guests have great access to explore Athens leisurely.
The Tower of the Winds or the Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes is an octagonal Pentelic marble clocktower in the Roman Agora in Athens that functioned as a horologion or "timepiece". Unofficially, the monument is also called Aerides (Greek: Αέρηδες), which means Winds. The structure features a combination of sundials, a water clock, and a wind vane. It was supposedly built by Andronicus of Cyrrhus around 50 BC, but according to other sources, might have been constructed in the 2nd century…
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It is one of our city`s most popular touristic attractions and one of Athens landmarks. The Panathenaic Stadium is located on the site of an ancient stadium and for many centuries hosted games in which nude male athletes competed (gymnikoi agones) in track events, athletics championships as we would call them today. The stadium was built long before dimensions for athletics venues were standardized, and its track and layout follow the ancient hairpin-like model. It could once seat about 80,000…
The National Archaeological Museum is the largest museum in Greece and one of the world's greatest museums. Although its original purpose was to secure all the finds from the nineteenth century excavations in and around Athens, it gradually became the central National Archaeological Museum and was enriched with finds from all over Greece. Its abundant collections, with more than 11,000 exhibits, provide a panorama of Greek civilization from the beginnings of Prehistory to Late Antiquity. The museum is housed in…
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The Byzantine and Christian Museum, which is based in Athens, is one of Greece’s national museums. Its areas of competency are centered on – but not limited to – religious artifacts of the Early Christian, Byzantine, Medieval, post-Byzantine and later periods which it exhibits, but also acquires, receives, preserves, conserves, records, documents, researches, studies, publishes and raises awareness of. The museum has over 25,000 artifacts in its possession. The artifacts date from between the 3rd and 20th century AD, and…
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The Benaki Museum ranks among the major institutions that have enriched the material assets of the Greek state. It is also the oldest museum in Greece operating as a Foundation under Private Law. Through its extensive collections that cover several different cultural fields and its more general range of activities serving more than one social need, the Benaki Museum is perhaps the sole instance of a complex structure within the broader network of museum foundations in Greece. Permanent collection:This group…
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The Museum of Cycladic Art is dedicated to the study and promotion of ancient cultures of the Aegean and Cyprus, with special emphasis on Cycladic Art of the 3rd millennium BC. It was founded in 1986, to house the collection of Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris. Since then it has grown in size to accommodate new acquisitions, obtained either through direct purchases or through donations by important collectors and institutions. CYCLADIC CULTUREThe Cycladic civilization flourished on the islands of the central…
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The museum presents the modern history of Athens, Europe’s oldest and most famous city, since it became the capital of the newly founded Hellenic State in 1834 under the first royal couple, Otto and Amalia. Your tour will also include many other facets of Athenian history, culture and life. Several other collections and a series of typical late 19th century- early 20th century sitting and living rooms of the Athenian aristocracy complete the different aspects of our city offered by…
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The Numismatic Museum is one of the oldest public museums in Greece.It was established in 1834, the same year as the National Archaeological Museum. The Numismatic Museum owns 500.000 acquisitions –mostly coins as well as medals, lead bullae, gems, weights, obeloi and talents- dated from the 14th century BC until today. The richest collections are those of the ancient coins dated from the 6th century BC to the 5th century AD. These are the coins of the city-states, the kings…
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The Jewish Museum is housed in a renovated neoclassical building of great architectural interest. Three of its four floors are divided into three consecutive levels, of unequal height. All the levels are arranged around a central octagonal shaft, which runs the height of the building, from the basement to the roof. Its glass dome allows natural light to flood through all the levels, while the Museum’s stairway winds around it in an anti-clockwise spiral from the bottom up. Following this…
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A small but fascinating museum for music lovers, with free entrance. The Museum of Popular Music Instruments “MELMOKE” is housed in an old Athenian mansion built in 1842, since June 1991 and presents the results of a half century of research and study by the musicologist Fivos Anoyanakis. The collection of about 1200 Greek popular musical instruments dating from the 18th century to the present day are exposed mainly on the basis of their ethnological and musical interest. The display is…
The first museum was on the Acropolis; it was completed in 1874 and underwent a moderate expansion in the 1950s. However, successive excavations on the Acropolis uncovered many new artifacts which significantly exceeded its original capacity. An additional motivation for the construction of a new museum was that in the past, when Greece made requests for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the United Kingdom, which acquired the items in a controversial manner, it was suggested by some British…
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The museum is housed in a unique historic Art Nouveau building. It is not large in size but includes extremely interesting exhibits. About 300 operating models of incredible, for that time, discoveries. Tools and automations that today are taken for granted, were designed and built by Greek scientists and inventors the period from 2000 BC until the end of the ancient Greek world. Τhe contribution of the ancient Greeks to the field of Philosophy and the Fine Arts is…
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The National Observatory of Athens (NOA), is housed in a elegant 19th-century building. The Observatory is located at Lofos Nymphon (Nymphs Hill) and it offers a breathtaking panoramic view of Athens. You need to book a ticket in order to join. The stuff will give you a very interesting introduction before going to the big room of the telescope where you can look at the stars and planets. The museumSince 1842, the Sina building has been renovated quite a few…
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Exhibition: [ 30 November 2018 - 30 March 2019 ] Don’t miss this impressive exhibition for the 500th anniversary since the death of Leonardo Da Vinci world famous Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, geometrist, engineer, anatomist, musicians and palaeontologist. Three major exhibitions on his life and work are united in Athens for the first time.With the help of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Rome, the Lumiere Technology Institute in Paris, as well as specialists from Italy and France, the…
Anafiotika is a scenic tiny neighborhood of Athens, part of old historical neighborhood of Plaka. Only 10 minutes walk from your apartment in Syntagma, it lies in northern east side of the Acropolis hill. First houses were built in the era of King Othon of Greece (1832 - 1862) when workers from the island of Anafi came to Athens in order to work as constructor workers in the refurbishment of King’s Palace. Soon, workers from other Cycladic islands also started…
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Psiri is the place to be if you are interested for Greek food, live Greek music or nightlife. Just 10 minutes walk from your cozy Syntagma flat, there is no area as authentically Greek as Psiri. Worth visiting, if someone wants to see how Greeks spend their nights out. As it is right next to Monastiraki it can be included in a walk in Athens center. Psyri is full of contradictions. Until the early 1990s, Psyri had a dangerous reputation,…
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Kolonaki is the elegant and chic area of central Athens thus an upmarket district. It is located between Syntagma square, Lycabettus hill, and Exarchia. From the National Gardens, cross Vassilias Sophias street, walk from Irodou Attikou str. past the beautiful mansion that houses the Benaki Museum and you will find yourself at Kolonaki square. Its name derives from the two-meter column, located in Kolonaki Square, that defined the area even before a single house had been built there. This is…
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The living museum of Greek dance, since 1953. A public-benefit institution subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and the National Tourism Organization under the auspices of the Municipality of Athens.Almost daily performances of a 75 dancers group on their traditional and original costumes and jewelery, musicians and folk singers at the lovely garden theater, with 860 seats, on Philopappus Hill in Athens, opposite the Acropolis. That is a great place to spend a hot night in Athens, while getting to…
A mere 8km outside of Athens, Diomidous Botanical Garden sits like a green haven in amidst the bustling city; 1,800 hectares of peaceful tranquillity in the western suburbs of Haidari. Its extensive array of flora includes a number of rare species as well as a selection of trees from Africa, Asia and Australasia. Used as an area to study for students from the University of Athens it's also a botanists dream with a number of pharmaceutical plants.The Diomidous Botanical Gardens…
The Industrial Gas Museum opened its doors to the public in 2013. The main objective of the Museum is the promotion and protection of the old Athens Gasworks plant, an industrial heritage monument that supplied energy and lighting in the Athens metropolitan area for 130 years. The visit to the Museum includes a museum path with 13 stops in specific areas of the factory. The museum path tour helps the visitor follow the gas production line, admire the mechanical equipment…
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Agistri island drone view
A perfect destination for a day trip
Cape sounion drone view