Athens

Why Athens works

The Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon, has watched over Athens since the 5th century BC, its Doric columns — built under the statesman Pericles as a temple to Athena — visible from nearly every rooftop bar in the city and dramatically floodlit after dark. The climb up includes the Propylaea gateway, the small Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheion with its six sculpted maiden columns, the Caryatids. At the hill's base, the Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009 with a glass floor over active excavations, displays original sculptures at eye level, including surviving Parthenon marbles, and campaigns openly for the return of the 'Elgin Marbles' from the British Museum. Plaka, the old town beneath the Acropolis, mixes neoclassical houses and Byzantine churches with tavernas serving souvlaki, moussaka and grilled octopus on shaded terraces, while Monastiraki's flea market and ancient Roman Agora sit just downhill. The Panathenaic Stadium, rebuilt entirely in white marble for the first modern Olympics in 1896, remains the only stadium of its kind. Modern Athens asserts itself at Syntagma Square, where evzone guards in traditional kilts perform a formal changing of the guard, and along the Athens Riviera, where beach clubs line the coast toward Cape Sounion's clifftop Temple of Poseidon.

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