Places worth the detour.

First Editions

Erato

Erato is an antiquarian bookshop on Thisseiou 9, steps from Monastiraki Square, specialising in first editions, rare books, collectibles, and secondhand titles across all genres. The physical shop is dense and well-organised; an online catalogue ships throughout Greece and internationally.

Cine Paris

Exarchia

Ninetto Gallery

A contemporary art gallery at Leoforos Alexandras 2, co-founded by Romain Bitton and Fred de Schonen. Four shows a year, international and Athenian artists together, open Wednesday to Saturday. The founding logic: Athens has the space, the light and the energy that the rest of Europe can no longer offer.

Beach

Akti Vouliagmeni Beach

Akti Vouliagmeni opened in 1960 as the Greek National Tourism Organisation's flagship bathing complex, designed by four architects — Vassiliadis, Sakellariou, Vourekas and Hatzimichalis — on 650 metres of coast 25 kilometres south of Athens. Now managed by HPPC, it remains the most visited organised beach in Attica: Blue Flag water, seven tennis courts, a café-bar, first-aid station, lifeguards, and full accessibility including a sea-access ramp for disabled visitors.

CURATED STAYS

Near Here.

Hotels positioned for the neighbourhoods worth walking in.

Pangrati

Cine Oasis

Cine Oasis opened around 1950 as a shadow theatre on Pratinou Street in Pangrati. Bought by filmmaker Vangelis Melissinos, who converted it to cinema. Since the 1980s run by sisters Dia and Maria, dedicated exclusively to cinephile programming. Featured in Le Monde, The Times of London, and American publications. One of Athens' most characterful outdoor screens.

The Naxos Apothecary

An apothecary on Kolokotroni from the brothers who founded KORRES. A homeopathic pharmacy and Naxos in a bottle — fragrances named for the island's villages, creams from its herbs, design from its bones.

Contemporary

ERE Athens

Monastiraki

Hyper Hypo

A curated art, design and photography bookshop on Voreou Street, Monastiraki. Opened 2021 by graphic designer Stathis Mitropoulos and former New York Times Style Magazine editor Andreas Kokkinos. Monocle noticed. The right people always find it.

Museum

Benaki Museum Pireos

The contemporary wing of the Benaki Museum, on Pireos in the post-industrial west of Athens. A 1950s car dealership reworked by Kokkinou & Kourkoulas, opened 2004. The contemporary art programme that anchored a whole neighbourhood.

THE TABLE

Eat Here.

Restaurants in the same postcodes as the places worth finding.

Japanese Market

Ikigai Japanese Market

The first new-generation Japanese grocery and market in Athens, at Skoufou 15 near Syntagma. A Green Garlic Management venue — the same group behind Birdman, Ekiben, Vezené, and Manári — organised around three axes: delicatessen and pantry, butchery, and Japanese liquor. Alongside them: handmade ceramics by Greek and Japanese artists, kitchenware, cookbooks. Open daily 10:00 to midnight.

Sea Turtle Rescue Center

The only sea turtle rescue centre in Greece, run by ARCHELON from old railway wagons at the 3rd Marina of Glyfada. Since 1994, roughly 70 injured turtles a year — hooked, entangled, injured by boats — come here, recover, and return to the Aegean. Tours by appointment: 45 minutes, groups of eight.

Polis Hammam

Cine Dexameni

Cine Dexameni operates each summer above Hadrian's Reservoir — a Roman cistern built between 125 and 140 CE at the western base of Lycabettus, supplied by a 19-kilometre aqueduct cut through solid rock from Mount Parnitha. One of Athens' oldest and best-loved open-air cinemas, the screen sits over the reservoir's stone roof while the original vaulted chamber remains sealed below. Dexameni Square, Kolonaki.

Shop

Olive Era

A Greek skincare brand built around bio olive oil, with its Athens flagship on Perikleous behind Syntagma. Amber bottles, taupe labels, an Athens Spirit edition that turns the city's archaeology into illustration.

THE PEOPLE

Who Made This.

The curators, architects, and gallerists behind the spaces.

Kolonaki

Benaki Museum - Ghika Gallery

The former home and studio of Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Greece's most significant 20th-century painter. A 1932 interwar apartment block in Kolonaki — preserved exactly as Ghika left it, studio on the sixth floor, four floors of Greek modernist culture below.

Hadrian’s Reservoir

Hadrian’s Reservoir is a Roman cistern at the western base of Lycabettus, commissioned by Emperor Hadrian in 125 CE and completed under Antoninus Pius in 140 CE. Fed by an aqueduct approximately 25 kilometres long cut through solid rock from Mount Parnitha, it supplied Athens with water for over a thousand years. The vaulted interior remains structurally intact. A plain 19th-century white building in Dexameni Square — whose name literally means reservoir — marks the entrance. Cine Dexameni operates directly above.

Athens Central Market

Beach

Astir Beach

The Athenian Riviera's defining beach since 1959, designed by Kostas Voutsinas. 400 metres of sand, striped umbrellas, the Temple of Apollo Zoster on the headland, the Four Seasons next door.

Shop

Mofu Vintage Design

The vintage and contemporary design shop that helped put Sarri Street on the map. Furniture and objects sourced from the US and Europe — 1950s through to 1970s, with the occasional contemporary piece that knows its company. The edit is tight. The finds are real.

FROM THE JOURNAL

Athens Doesn't Pretend.

Read →

Ten Twentyclub

A racquet-sports and wellness club on the Voula beachfront. Padel, tennis, pickleball, ice bath, sauna, sea access. The country club reimagined as a Riviera concept. Members and visitors.

Melissinos Art

The son of Stavros Melissinos — Athens’ Poet Sandalmaker — now runs this tiny workshop on Tzireon in Makrygianni. Sandals made to order in twenty minutes, by hand, from classical Greek patterns unchanged since the 1950s.

Shop

Phāon

Jazz Bar

Half Note Jazz Club

Half Note is Athens' most celebrated jazz club — an intimate room in the Mets neighbourhood where international and Greek jazz artists have performed since 1978. From bebop to contemporary jazz, it remains the city's most enduring address for live improvised music.

CURATED STAYS

Near Here.

Hotels positioned for the neighbourhoods worth walking in.