There is a combined archaeological ticket in Athens that covers the Acropolis, the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, Hadrian’s Library, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Kerameikos and the Aristotle’s Lyceum site, valid for five consecutive days. The booth at the Acropolis will sell you a single-site ticket without mentioning it unless you ask by name. For anyone planning to see more than two of those, the combined ticket pays for itself immediately, and it also lets you enter the Acropolis through a gate other than the main one.

Go up first, and go up early

The Acropolis opens at eight in the morning. In July and August the rock is unshaded, the marble reflects the heat upward, and the site has been closed between noon and five in the afternoon on the hottest days since 2023, when temperatures pass 40 degrees, a policy introduced after staff and visitors collapsed. The first hour after opening is not a preference, it is the only comfortable one.

Two entrances exist. The main gate on the west, below the Propylaea, takes the crowds and the coaches. The southeast gate, near the Theatre of Dionysus and the Acropolis Museum, is usually quieter and puts you on a longer, gentler climb through the theatre rather than up the marble stairs.

The marble underfoot is polished to a shine by two and a half thousand years of feet, and it is genuinely slippery. Smooth-soled shoes are a bad idea, and stilettos are banned outright by a rule from 2009 that exists to protect the stone rather than the visitor.

Scaffolding has stood on the Parthenon continuously since 1975 and will be there for the rest of your life. The restoration is dismantling and rebuilding sections with the original blocks, correcting a botched intervention from the 1900s, and there is no completion date.

The museum at the bottom, and the empty spaces in it

The Acropolis Museum sits 300 metres from the rock, with a glass floor over an excavated ancient neighbourhood you walk above on the way in. The top floor is a rectangular gallery, oriented exactly as the Parthenon is and the same size, holding the surviving frieze at eye level with the building visible through the windows.

Where original panels are missing, the museum installs plain white plaster casts. That contrast is the point: roughly half the frieze is in London, removed by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1812, and the gallery is built as a permanent argument about it. Greece has requested the return for decades and the dispute continues.

Entry is a separate ticket from the archaeological sites.

Plaka and Anafiotika, which is a Cycladic village inside the city

Plaka is the old quarter under the north slope, and the streets closest to the Acropolis entrance are heavily given over to souvenirs. Walk further in and it becomes residential, with neoclassical houses, courtyards and cats.

Climb high enough and the architecture changes completely. Anafiotika is a cluster of about forty whitewashed cube houses with blue doors and bougainvillea, built in the 1860s by stonemasons brought from the island of Anafi to work on the king’s palace, who built themselves homes in the style of home. The lanes are a metre wide, there are no cars, and people live there.

The Ancient Agora below is where Socrates actually taught, and it is a large green site with a Doric temple, the Hephaisteion, that is the best-preserved in Greece. It is included in the combined ticket and is usually a quarter as busy as the Acropolis.

Eating, and the trap on Adrianou

The restaurants with a man outside holding a menu, a printed picture of moussaka, and a free ouzo offer are not where Athenians eat. That is not snobbery; it is a business model aimed at people passing once.

Go to a taverna without a view. Souvlaki from a counter, wrapped in pita with tomato, onion and chips inside, costs a few euro and is the standard Athenian street meal. Ordering a plate of several small dishes to share, mezedes, with a carafe of house wine, is how a longer lunch works, and the house wine served from the barrel is usually decent and always cheap.

Greek coffee is served in a small cup with the grounds still in it. Do not drink the last centimetre.

Getting about, and the one line that matters

The metro from the airport runs on line 3 directly to Syntagma and Monastiraki, takes about forty minutes and costs a flat airport fare that is several times a normal ticket but a fraction of a taxi. Trains run roughly every thirty minutes, which is the catch: miss one and you wait. Tickets must be validated at the gate, inspectors do work the airport line, and the fine is charged in cash on the platform.

Syntagma station is worth two minutes on its own. During construction the diggers went through 25 centuries of city, and rather than clear the finds away the transport authority put them in glass cases along the concourse, including a cross-section of excavated earth showing the layers and an aqueduct channel left in place.

The hill nobody climbs, and the one everybody does

Lycabettus is the highest point in Athens at 277 metres, reached by a funicular from Kolonaki or a steep 25-minute path, with a chapel and a cafe at the top and a view over the whole basin to the sea. It is the standard sunset spot and it is busy.

Filopappou Hill, opposite the Acropolis to the southwest, is free, wooded, has paths laid out by the architect Dimitris Pikionis in the 1950s using stone salvaged from demolished houses, and gives you the Parthenon in profile against the evening sky rather than a distant skyline. Almost nobody goes.

Both are open ground with no lighting after dark. Come down while you can still see the path.

Across the water, Istanbul holds the other half of this region’s history, and Dubrovnik sits on the Adriatic route between them.

Book the trip you have just read about

These are the companies we use ourselves, and what each one is actually good at.

Provider	Best for	Go to provider
	Hotels & apartments The widest choice of places to sleep, and the Genius discount starts on booking number one. Read our Booking.com review	Check hotel prices at Booking.com
	Flights Live fares from airlines and booking sites side by side, one-click booking, and a refund guarantee you can add to any ticket. Read our Soar review	Check flight prices at Soar
	Whole homes A front door of your own, with a kitchen and a washing machine, for a weekend or a month. Read our Airbnb review	Check homes at Airbnb
	Luxury hotel perks Breakfast for two and a 4pm checkout at more than 1,900 hotels — if you hold the card. Read our American Express Travel review	See the hotels at American Express Travel
	Flight + hotel packages Flight, hotel and car in one basket, on one bill, with one rewards balance across three brands. Read our Expedia Group review	Check package prices at Expedia Group
	All-inclusive holidays Plane, hotel, transfer and excursions under one contract, with one number to call when it goes wrong. Read our TUI Group review	Check holiday prices at TUI Group
	Small-group tours Groups capped at around twelve, led by somebody who lives in the country you are walking through. Read our Intrepid Travel review	Check tour prices at Intrepid Travel
	Tailor-made itineraries A route drawn for you alone, by a company that has been drawing them since 1758. Read our Cox & Kings review	Request a quote at Cox & Kings
	Reviews & things to do Check what other travellers actually found, before the money leaves your account. Read our Tripadvisor review	Read the reviews at Tripadvisor