Athens
Athens has finally become a city you can recommend, and not only for the Acropolis. The fifteen years since the 2004 Olympic upgrade and the financial crisis that followed have produced a small generation of serious restaurants, contemporary galleries, and a confident art scene anchored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on the southern coast (Renzo Piano, 2016) and the Onassis Stegi on Syngrou. The city no longer asks to be experienced only as ruins.
A word on basing. Plaka, the lane-and-bougainvillea quarter under the Acropolis, is the cliché and is fine for a first night. Koukaki, on the southern slope of the rock, is the honest recommendation: walking distance to the Acropolis Museum, residential, with the better restaurants. Kolonaki is the shopping quarter and holds the small museums (Benaki, Goulandris, Cycladic Art) along with the heavier price tags. Avoid Omonia and the streets immediately around the central market unless you have a specific destination in mind.
Go to the Acropolis at opening (eight in summer) or as late as possible before closing; the middle of the day is heatstroke and crowds. The Acropolis Museum, by Bernard Tschumi, holds the surviving Parthenon sculptures the British Museum does not. The Ancient Agora north-west of the Acropolis is the open ground where Socrates was tried and Plato walked. Anafiotika, the cluster of small white-washed houses tucked into the Acropolis's northern flank, was built in the 1840s by Cycladic stonemasons summoned to construct King Otto's palace and feeling homesick.
The Athens Riviera runs south along the coast from Faliro to Sounion, where the Temple of Poseidon stands on a cliff above the sea; the drive takes about an hour, and the temple at sunset is worth the round trip. Three nights in Athens before any island week; four if you want to take the National Archaeological Museum on Patission at the right pace. It holds, among much else, the Antikythera mechanism.
House Notes
Arrival
Helistar operates a fleet of three Airbus types — AS365 Dauphin, H135, H120 — from its heliport at Koropi. Island transfers are calibrated for day trips: Mykonos in around 36 minutes, Santorini 52, Amanzoe 22. The fleet base operates daily, 07:00 to 21:00.
The address
The Hotel Grande Bretagne stands on the corner of Vasileos Georgiou A' and Panepistimiou on Syntagma Square — built as a private residence in 1842, converted to a hotel by Efstathios Lampsas in 1874, now part of Marriott's Luxury Collection under Lampsa Hellenic Hotels. The 320 rooms and the Roof Garden Restaurant carry the Acropolis view the Plaka hotels do not.
The Riviera
The Four Seasons Astir Palace sits on the Lemos Peninsula at Vouliagmeni — 303 rooms across 100 acres, three private beaches, ten restaurants and bars including Pelagos and Matsuhisa. Half an hour from the Acropolis when the city is the wrong shape for the trip.
Goulandris
The Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation opened at 13 Eratosthenous in Pangrati on 2 October 2019 — a 1920s neoclassical mansion with a new extension descending five floors below ground. The collection runs Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Degas, Picasso, Braque, Miró, Giacometti, with Tsarouchis and Hadjikyriakos-Ghika on the Greek floors. A 1966 Chagall portrait of Elise greets the entrance.
The Cycladic
The Museum of Cycladic Art keeps its permanent collection at 4 Neofytou Douka and its temporary programme in the adjacent Stathatos Mansion at Vasilissis Sofias and Irodotou. The standing holding is among the most important collections of Cycladic art anywhere — the slender flat-faced marble figurines of the third millennium BC that moved Brancusi and Moore. Closed Tuesdays.
Spondi
Spondi at Pyrronos 5 in Pangrati, under head chef Arnaud Bignon and French throughout — the French table against which the city's others are measured. The neoclassical courtyard is the dinner setting in the city when the night calls for slow.
The Odeon
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus, cut into the southern slope of the Acropolis on Dionysiou Areopagitou — raised in AD 161 by Herodes Atticus in memory of his wife Regilla, a steep marble auditorium of 33 rows seating around 5,000 under a roof once of cedar of Lebanon. The audience stands and orchestra were repaved in Pentelic marble in the 1950s. The walk past it at dusk is the quiet hour.
Mesogaia
Domaine Papagiannakos works 70-year-old Savatiano bush vines at Markopoulo in the Mesogaia plain, east of the Acropolis. The roots run 20 metres for water and minerals. The Attic Savatiano of the old vines is the white that pairs with the city's tomato; a tasting fits the morning before an island flight.
The pathway
Dimitris Pikionis paved a path of reclaimed stone — lintels, stoops, rough-finished marble — from the base of the Acropolis to the apex of Filopappou Hill between 1954 and 1957. He chose the materials from classical buildings being demolished elsewhere in Athens. Walk it at first light, before the buses reach the Acropolis gate.
Vouliagmeni
Lake Vouliagmeni, a brackish thermal pool replenished from the Saronic by an underwater channel through flooded caves, holds 21–29°C year-round. The water carries hydrogen sulphide; the place has functioned as a spa since the late nineteenth century. Open daily 08:00 to 19:00; same-day reservations are not taken.