Athens

Athens is one of the world's oldest cities, with a recorded history of more than 3,400 years. The Acropolis was a Mycenaean citadel, and in the 5th century BC the city-state became the centre of democracy, drama and philosophy, whose fleet and alliances paid for the Parthenon. In 1204 the Fourth Crusade conquered Athens, and in 1458 it fell to the Ottomans under Mehmed II, who was so struck by its monuments that he forbade their looting. Under Ottoman rule it shrank to a small country town.

During the War of Independence Greek insurgents took the city in 1822, lost it in 1826, and held the Acropolis until June 1827; the last Ottoman forces left in March 1833. In 1834 Athens replaced Nafplio as capital of the new kingdom, though it was then a town of about 4,000 people. King Otto commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert to plan a modern capital, and the neoclassical public buildings of the centre date from this period. The first modern Olympic Games were held here in 1896.

The 20th century made Athens a metropolis. Refugees from Asia Minor swelled it in the 1920s, occupation brought famine in 1941–42, and the street fighting of December 1944 and the Polytechnic uprising of November 1973 both took place in the centre. After the civil war the population boomed, and apartment blocks covered the basin, bringing chronic smog. A new metro, airport and motorway, built around the 2004 Olympics, made it a more functional city; the debt crisis from 2010 and the capital controls of 2015 hit it hard.

Athens holds two UNESCO World Heritage Sites — the Acropolis and the medieval Daphni Monastery — and its museums, from the Acropolis Museum to the National Archaeological Museum, form one of the densest concentrations of ancient art anywhere. The modern city has its own culture beside the ancient one. UNESCO named it World Book Capital in 2018, the Athens Festival has long staged theatre and concerts in the Roman Odeon of Herodes Atticus, and open-air garden cinemas show films on summer nights.

Music runs from rebetiko, the songs of the refugee quarters, heard in the live music tavernas of Psyrri, to the clubs of Gazi and the bars of Exarcheia. Football divides the city: Panathinaikos and AEK, founded by refugees from Constantinople, against Olympiacos of neighbouring Piraeus, and the Olympic Stadium built for 2004 is one of the city's modern landmarks.

Neighbourhood identity is strong — Athenians divide the centre into districts such as Pagkrati, Exarcheia, Petralona, Kypseli, Koukaki and Kolonaki, each with its own history and character. The Orthodox calendar shapes the year: Clean Monday brings kite flying, Easter brings candlelit midnight services, and name-days are celebrated more than birthdays. Life is lived outdoors for much of the year, in squares, cafés and the evening walk.

About 640,000 people live in the Municipality of Athens, a small administrative unit at the core of an urban area of about 3.1 million (2021 census), which covers the Attica basin and includes Piraeus. The wider metropolitan area produces close to half of Greece's economic output, and its economy rests on government, finance, shipping, tourism and services; many of the country's largest companies have their headquarters here, and Piraeus is the chief port of Greece.

Most Athenians live in apartment blocks, the concrete polykatoikies that fill the basin from the wealthy northern suburbs to the working-class west and the beach suburbs along the Saronic Gulf. Dinner is eaten late, and the bars fill late in the evening.

The debt crisis hit the city hard, and the capital controls of 2015 struck the Athens Stock Exchange. Summer heat is a recurring strain, made worse in parts of the city by the urban heat island, and brush fires have burned forest on Mount Parnitha, which is considered critical to the city's air quality; the smog of the 1980s has become less common since the measures of the 1990s. On the site of the old airport at Elliniko, work is under way on the Hellenikon Metropolitan Park, planned as one of Europe's largest landscaped parks.

Athens eats fast and late. The street staple is souvlaki — pork or chicken grilled on a skewer, often eaten in pita — and gyros, meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie and rolled in pita with onion, tomato, chips and tzatziki. In Athens a single skewer is called a kalamaki. Mornings start with a koulouri, a sesame bread ring, or with bougatsa, a pastry sold in bougatsadika along with other pies, and loukoumades — fried dough balls drizzled with honey and often spiced with cinnamon — are a favourite sweet.

The cheap souvlaki grills around Monastiraki are an institution, and Psyrri's mezedopoleia serve small plates with ouzo or tsipouro late into the night. The weekly laiki markets, held street by street in every neighbourhood, are where Athenians buy fruit, vegetables and olives. Kolonaki and Plaka are the classic districts for eating out, and the fish tavernas of Mikrolimano in Piraeus face the boats in the harbour.

Attica has its own produce: the thyme honey of Mount Hymettus, and the Savatiano grape, used mainly for retsina and in places also made into wine without the pine resin. From the nearby islands come pistachios from Aegina, sold all over the city.