Athens: The Ancient City — Acropolis, Agora & Souvlaki Lanes

Book tickets online in advance at etickets.odysseus.culture.gr — the Acropolis sells out entirely during summer months and queues are brutal even in spring. Arriving at the west entrance gates at 8am (opening time) gives you the first hour before the tour buses arrive, when the Parthenon glows in the eastern light and you can stand in the Propylaea without anyone blocking your eyeline. The site covers more ground than most visitors realise: the Erechtheion (with the Porch of the Caryatids), the Temple of Athena Nike, and the sweeping south slope with the Theatre of Dionysus — the world's oldest theatre, built in the 6th century BC — deserve as much time as the Parthenon itself. Allow 2–2.5 hours. A licensed guide hired at the gate (€15–25, 1.5–2 hours) is worth every cent — the site has almost no interpretive signage.

The Acropolis Museum (open from 9am) sits at the foot of the hill, built directly above an excavated ancient Athenian neighbourhood visible through the glass floor. It is one of Europe's finest modern museums — a building as considered as its contents. The top floor's Parthenon Gallery displays the surviving frieze sculptures at the scale and orientation they occupied on the temple, with reproductions filling the gaps occupied by the Elgin Marbles in London. See the museum immediately after the site while the architecture is fresh in your mind; the pediment sculptures gain enormously from this sequence. Allow 2 hours; the museum café on the upper level has one of the finest views of the Acropolis in the city.

Plaka (the oldest continuously inhabited neighbourhood in Athens) climbs the slopes directly below the Acropolis through neoclassical townhouses, Byzantine churches, and bougainvillea-draped lanes. Within Plaka, the Anafiotika quarter — built by 19th-century workers from the Cycladic island of Anafi — is a whitewashed village of narrow stepped alleys transplanted onto the Acropolis slope. It is the most visually arresting ten minutes' walk in central Athens, and almost completely car-free. End the afternoon at the Roman Agora and Tower of the Winds (a 1st-century BC octagonal marble clocktower, remarkably intact) before the neighbourhood fills with restaurant touts in the evening.

The Ancient Agora — the marketplace and civic centre of ancient Athens, where Socrates taught, Paul preached, and democracy was debated — is, paradoxically, less visited than the Acropolis and far more evocative. The reconstructed Stoa of Attalos (a 2nd-century BC colonnaded market building, rebuilt in the 1950s to its original specifications) houses a small but superb museum of everyday Athenian life — pottery, bronze coins, terracotta figurines, and, most remarkably, bronze ballots and the kleroterion (jury selection machine) that made Athenian democracy work mechanically. The Temple of Hephaestus on the western edge is the best-preserved ancient Greek temple on earth, more intact than the Parthenon. The site is covered by the combined Athens multi-site ticket (€30). Allow 2 hours.

Monastiraki's Sunday flea market is the definitive version — spreading from Plateia Monastirakiou through Ifaistou Street and into Avyssinia Square — but the permanent antiques shops and stalls operate daily. The market is a genuine working flea market rather than a tourist craft bazaar: military surplus, vintage cameras, old coins, bootleg cassettes, used books in Greek and English, Art Deco mirrors, and the occasional Byzantine icon. The square itself, backed by a ruined mosque and the ancient Agora hill, is one of the most atmospheric spaces in central Athens. Bring cash; prices are negotiable on most things.

Psyri — the neighbourhood immediately north of Monastiraki — underwent Athens' most complete reinvention over the past decade. What was a light-industrial quarter is now a dense grid of independent bars, street-art murals, small live-music venues, and restaurants that feel nothing like tourist Athens. The streets around Plateia Iroon are ideal for an afternoon wander; the neighbourhood is most alive from 6pm onwards. For the quintessential Athens sundowner, book a table at A for Athens (Miaouli 2) or Couleur Locale (Normanou 6), both rooftop bars with uninterrupted Acropolis views and solid cocktail menus. The Acropolis at dusk, lit from below, is one of Europe's great urban views.

Cape Sounion is 70km south of Athens along the Attic coast — one of Greece's most dramatically sited ancient monuments. The Temple of Poseidon (444 BC) stands on a 60-metre cliff at the southernmost tip of Attica, its white marble columns visible from ships 50km offshore. Byron carved his name on the temple's base in 1810 (you can find it). KTEL buses from Pedion Areos leave regularly from 6:30am (€6.60 each way, 1.5 hours via the coastal road). Take the coastal route south, which passes through Vouliagmeni, Varkiza, and a string of Athenian beach clubs — the bus hugs the coastline. Arrive early to have the clifftop to yourself before the tour buses at 11am. Allow 2 hours at the site.

On the return journey, alight at Vouliagmeni (ask the driver) for Lake Vouliagmeni — a thermal lake fed by underground springs that maintains a constant 22–29°C year-round, flanked by pine trees and a small pebble beach. Entry €15; the lake is one of Athens' best-kept secrets and a genuinely unusual swimming experience. Alternatively, Glyfada's beach promenade is the easiest introduction to the Athenian summer beach scene — a 30-minute metro ride from the city centre (Glyfada stop on tram from Syntagma).

Kolonaki, on the slopes of Lycabettus Hill northeast of Syntagma, is where old Athenian money and the city's gallery scene coexist. The main square (Plateia Kolonakiou) and surrounding streets — Skoufa, Tsakalof, Patriarchou Ioakim — are lined with independent boutiques, serious art galleries, and the city's best coffee shops. Take the funicular up Lycabettus Hill for the 360-degree view of Athens at dusk: the Acropolis, the sea, Piraeus, and on clear days the island of Aegina. The hilltop chapel of Agios Georgios and the café-bar at the summit are both worth the ride.

The National Archaeological Museum (Patission 44) is the largest in Greece and one of the world's great archaeology museums — the gold death mask of Agamemnon, the bronze Artemision Zeus (or Poseidon — the identity remains disputed), the Antikythera mechanism's context, Cycladic figurines 5,000 years old, and the Thera frescoes from Akrotiri. The museum needs at least 2.5 hours to do it justice; the collections span the entirety of ancient Greek civilisation from the Neolithic through the Roman period. The building is 19th-century neoclassical and the galleries, while old-fashioned in their layout, lend a serious, scholarly atmosphere. Entry €15 (not covered by the combined ticket — separate purchase).

Exarcheia, adjacent to the museum, is Athens' bohemian quarter — a neighbourhood of leftist bookshops, vinyl record stores, community gardens, and the densest concentration of graffiti murals in the city. It is safe, genuinely interesting, and completely unlike the tourist Athens of Plaka. The central square (Plateia Exarcheion) is surrounded by cafés serving the best freddo espressos in the city. The Kallidromiou Street laiki agora (street market, running most mornings except Sunday) sells fruit, vegetables, olives, and cheese at neighbourhood prices.

Syntagma Square — the city's central plaza, backed by the Hellenic Parliament (former Royal Palace, 1843) — hosts the changing of the Evzone guard on the hour, with the full ceremonial version on Sundays at 11am. The Zappeion Gardens below the parliament, and the wider National Garden behind it, are a 15-hectare green oasis in the dense city centre: duck ponds, ancient ruins incorporated into the paths, and shade from the midday heat. The Benaki Museum of Greek Culture (Koumbari 1, Kolonaki) — covering Greek art and artefacts from the Neolithic to the 20th century — rounds off four days of Athens archaeology with a focus on Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern Greek history. Entry €12.