Things to Do in Athens, Ranked and Priced

Summer: the ends of the day

From June to August the useful hours are 08:00 to about 10:30 and after 17:30. The Acropolis, both Agoras and the Olympieion are unshaded and the marble reflects heat, so the middle of the day belongs to the air-conditioned museums, lunch and the National Garden. Plan for the heat as well as the clock: during official heatwaves the culture ministry has repeatedly closed open-air sites through the hottest hours, roughly midday to 17:00, and the announcement can come a day or less ahead.

That means an early slot is not just comfort, it is insurance against finding the gate shut at noon. Municipalities open air-conditioned rooms when the heat peaks. The season chart has the temperatures behind that.

Winter: one site, then a museum

From 1 November everything except the Acropolis and the two big museums shuts at 15:00, so the Olympieion, the Roman Agora, Kerameikos and Aristotle's Lyceum give you a morning and little more. The Acropolis itself runs to 17:00. That shapes the day: one site in the morning, a museum in the afternoon, not two sites.

Come 17:45 the floodlit rock seen from Philopappos is the compensation, and the walk up Pikionis's marble paths is cool rather than punishing. Winter also brings the free state-site days, the first and third Sunday of each month through to 31 March, which crowd the popular sites by mid-morning. The opening-hours table has each closing time.

Any season: what to put where

The Acropolis first thing, because of the slot and the heat. The Ancient Agora early, because it closes before the rock does. The National Archaeological Museum on any afternoon except Tuesday, when it opens at 13:00 all year, so a Tuesday visit must start after lunch.

The hills at sunset, with Philopappos giving the best line of sight to the Acropolis. The changing of the guard on any hour you happen to be near Syntagma, and on Sunday at eleven if you want the band. If a public-sector strike falls on your day, remember the state sites are staffed by ministry employees, so the Acropolis can shut with them, which is another argument for putting the rock early in your stay.

Anything outside the city

Delphi, Cape Sounion, Meteora and the Saronic islands are day trips rather than things to do in Athens, and they are sorted by how many hours they take on the day trips hub. They repay the effort. Sounion's Temple of Poseidon went up in 444 BC, the same year as the Parthenon.

Meteora's monasteries have stood on their pillars since the 14th century, six still active out of about thirty. Delphi kept the Pythia's oracle until Theodosius closed the pagan sanctuaries in AD 393. The Athens Riviera and the beaches at Vouliagmeni are the same case but smaller, reachable by tram, and a half-day rather than a stop.

None of them belong on a city list.

Places we could not price on an official page

Several genuinely good Athens museums publish hours and no admission price on their own sites. Where that is true we say so on the entry: the Byzantine and Christian Museum and the Benaki both carry "not stated" rather than a figure copied from a third party. That is a gap in the source, not in the museum.

The Byzantine and Christian Museum was founded in 1914 and has occupied Villa Ilissia, an 1848 winter residence, since 1930. The Benaki was endowed by Antonis Benakis in 1930 in memory of his father, and the family gave their own mansion the following year with a collection of more than 37,000 objects. Both are worth a morning even with a blank where the price should be.

Nightlife, shopping and rooftop bars

They belong to a district rather than to a list. Rooftops and the flea market sit on Monastiraki, where the Tzistarakis mosque of 1759 still stands on the square. Late dinner is on Psyri, once the rough quarter of 19th-century Athens and the ground of the knife-carrying koutsavakides.

Bookshops and expensive coffee are on Kolonaki, laid out from the late 19th century for families who wanted to live near the royal palace. Cheap food and live music are on Exarchia, where the army broke the Polytechnic student occupation on 17 November 1973, a date still commemorated. The neighbourhoods hub measures each district by what its streets actually do after dark.