Where to Stay in Athens, Attica

What is Athens known for?

Athens is known worldwide as the city of the Acropolis and the cradle of Classical Greece. The Parthenon still crowns the hill above the streets, and the ancient city that shaped Western civilization draws travellers from across the world to Greece. The past is everywhere.

Ancient monuments stand among the modern streets, from the Ancient Agora of Athens to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Greece keeps its capital here.

What are the main landmarks in Athens?

Athens holds the greatest concentration of ancient monuments in Greece. The Acropolis rises above the city, crowned by the Parthenon and joined by the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. Ruins fill the slopes below.

The Theatre of Dionysus, the Ancient Agora of Athens and the Temple of Olympian Zeus lie close to the rock, near the Arch of Hadrian. The Acropolis Museum and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens hold the finds, while the Panathenaic Stadium recalls the ancient games.

What is the history of Athens?

Athens is one of the oldest cities in Europe, its history running back thousands of years. In the age of Classical Greece it grew into a major cultural, political and religious centre, and the ideas formed here shaped the course of Western civilization. Athens gave the world its first democracy.

At its sacred heart stood the Acropolis. The Parthenon and the temples around it rose on the rock, while assemblies met on the Pnyx and philosophers taught at the Platonic Academy. Public life gathered in the Ancient Agora of Athens.

Empires came and went across the centuries that followed. Roman builders left the Arch of Hadrian and Hadrian's Library, later centuries added Byzantine churches, and Ottoman rule left the Tzistarakis Mosque in the old centre. Layer sits on layer here.

The Panathenaic Stadium held the ancient games. When modern Greece won its independence, Athens became the capital, and the ancient city and the new nation grew together around the same rock. The old and the new stand together in the streets.

That long past still fills the everyday streets of Athens, from the market squares to the temples on the rock. The Acropolis watches over it all.

Where is Athens?

Athens spreads across the Attica region, close to the coast of the Mediterranean. It is the capital of the Attica region and a coastal urban area on the Mediterranean, ringed by hills and built around the rock of the Acropolis at its centre. The rock defines it.

Athens is the southernmost capital on the European mainland, looking out toward the Aegean Sea beyond the Attic Peninsula. The sea lies just to the south.

What is the climate of Athens?

Athens sits firmly in the hot, dry Mediterranean band. Summers are long, hot and rainless, with the heat held in by the ring of hills, while winters stay mild and bring most of the year's rain. The city bakes in summer.

Sea breezes off the Aegean Sea bring some relief on the hottest days. Snow falls rarely.

How do you get to Athens?

Athens is the main way into Greece and the whole Attica region. Most visitors arrive by air, and a metro line links the airport to the centre below the Acropolis, while roads and rail run out across Attica and north into the rest of Greece. The sea is close too.

Ferries reach the islands from ports along the Attica coast, out toward the Aegean Sea. From the centre, everything is within reach.