Anafiotika
Anafiotika is the most unexpected urban experience in Athens — a small settlement of whitewashed Cycladic houses built on the northern slope of the Acropolis rock by craftsmen from the island of Anafi, brought to Athens in the 1840s to build the new capital. They built their neighbourhood in the style of their island home: narrow staircase-alleys, cats on every step, bougainvillea and jasmine overflowing walls, and houses no wider than the island houses they were copying. The neighbourhood is now protected and still inhabited; it can be entered from Plaka's upper streets and remains, even in peak summer, relatively quiet.
The Acropolis Museum
The Acropolis Museum, at the base of the Acropolis rock below Plaka, opened in 2009 to house the sculptures and architectural fragments from the Parthenon and its companion temples in a building specifically designed for them. The top floor, aligned with the Parthenon above and flooded with light, displays the surviving Parthenon frieze pieces — those not in the British Museum — with spaces left for the absent sections, making the case for repatriation more eloquently than any argument. Book a timed entry; the museum is closed on Mondays.
The Tavernas of Plaka
Plaka's tourist restaurants are, in the main, expensive and ordinary. The exceptions are found by walking away from Adrianou Street and up toward the Acropolis slopes, where a handful of tavernas — Scholarchio, Damigos, To Kafeneio — have been serving Athenians as well as visitors for generations. The Athenian standard for a good meal is horiatiki (village salad with proper Dodoni feta, not crumbled but as a slab on top), grilled fish sold by weight, and retsina from a barrel — resinous, cold, and divisive in exactly the proportion of things worth trying.
Plaka in the Evening
Plaka transforms after 8pm, when the souvenir shops close and the neighbourhood becomes something closer to the village it once was. The Mnisikleous Street steps, running up toward Anafiotika, fill with tables from restaurants on both sides. The cats — Athens has an extraordinary population of street cats, fed and maintained by a community of dedicated volunteers — own the upper streets entirely. The view from the steps toward the illuminated Acropolis, framed by neoclassical façades and bougainvillea, is the image that explains why people have been living in this neighbourhood continuously for three thousand years.
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