Athens Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

About Athens Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Athens Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Athens has been making art for some three thousand years, and it has never stopped. The marble of the Acropolis, the painted pots of Kerameikos and the bronzes of the National Archaeological Museum sit a short walk from contemporary galleries in old silk-mill streets, a national museum of contemporary art in a 1960s brewery and a cultural centre by Renzo Piano on the edge of the sea. Here is the back story, and where to see it.

The ancient city

The story starts on the rock. The temples of the Acropolis were built in a single generation in the 5th century BC, and the Parthenon remains one of the most influential buildings in the world. Below it, the Ancient Agora was the heart of daily life, and its Temple of Hephaestus is among the best-preserved Greek temples anywhere.

Walk west and you reach Kerameikos, which takes its name from the ancient potters' quarter and cemetery. Its grave monuments, the remains of the city gates and a small museum make it one of the quietest sites in the centre, and the name lives on in the neighbourhood around it, now one of the city's arts districts.

In Athens the ancient and the contemporary are rarely more than a short walk apart.

To the east, the colossal columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus stand beside Hadrian's Arch, and in Plaka the octagonal Tower of the Winds, with its sundials and carved wind gods, rises from the Roman Agora. Across the city, the Panathenaic Stadium is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble, and the home of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

The great collections

The finds from all this are shown in some of the world's great museums. The Acropolis Museum displays the masterpieces of the rock, from the Caryatids to the Parthenon sculptures, in light-filled galleries with the Parthenon in view, and you walk over an excavated ancient neighbourhood on the way in. The National Archaeological Museum, the largest in Greece, holds the gold Mask of Agamemnon, the bronze Artemision god and the Antikythera mechanism.

In Kolonaki, the Museum of Cycladic Art is famous for its marble figurines, more than 4,500 years old, which inspired Picasso and Modigliani. Nearby, the Benaki Museum, founded by Antonis Benakis and opened in 1930, tells the story of Greek art and culture from prehistory to the 20th century in a neoclassical mansion, and the Byzantine and Christian Museum shows icons, mosaics and frescoes in a villa and garden.

For modern Greek art, the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, founded in 1900 and reopened after a major expansion, runs from the post-Byzantine era to the 20th century, from El Greco to Ghika. In Pangrati, the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation opened in 2019 in a 1920s neoclassical mansion with a ten-storey extension, hanging Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso and Giacometti alongside great Greek artists.

EMST and the Fix brewery

Athens's most striking modern building for art is an old brewery. The Fix brewery moved to a site on the west bank of the Ilissos river in the late 19th century, and in 1957 the Fix family asked the architect Takis Zenetos, one of the leading figures of post-war Greek modernism, to redesign it, working with Margaritis Apostolidis. Zenetos rebuilt it without stopping production, and the long, dynamic building he completed in 1961 became a landmark of the post-war city.

EMST, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, was founded in 1997 and began its work in 2000, moving between temporary homes before the brewery was rebuilt for it. The reconstruction was completed in February 2014 and the museum moved in in 2015. Today it shows Greek and international art from the 1960s to now, a short walk south of the Acropolis Museum in Koukaki.

Renzo Piano by the sea

Four kilometres south of the centre, in Kallithea, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center was designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. It brings the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera together in one building, linked by a public space called the Agora, in a 170,000-square-metre landscaped park on a site that was once a parking lot left over from the 2004 Olympic Games.

The opera wing has two auditoriums: one of 1,400 seats for opera, ballet and symphonic music, and one of 450 seats for more experimental work, opera for children, theatre and music. Climb to the Lighthouse on the roof for the view over the canal and the park to the sea, and come back in the evening for a performance.

The gallery quarters

Contemporary Athens has several gallery quarters, each with its own character. Kolonaki, on the slopes of Lycabettus, is the elegant one: Gagosian opened its Athens space here in 2017 in a listed modernist mansion, Kalfayan Galleries shows contemporary Greek art in a glass-box building, and Zoumboulakis Galleries has represented many of Greece's major artists for more than fifty years.

In Thiseio, on the promenade below the Acropolis, Bernier/Eliades opened in 1977 and introduced Arte Povera, minimalism and conceptual art to Greece; it has been here since 1999. West of Omonia, Metaxourgeio is named after an old silk factory, and its galleries include The Breeder, one of the city's most influential, and Rebecca Camhi, running since 1995 in a neoclassical house.

Next door, Gazi grew up around the 19th-century gasworks, now the Technopolis arts centre, and the Benaki Museum's contemporary venue at Pireos 138 stages large exhibitions of art, architecture, design and photography near Kerameikos metro. Most commercial galleries close on Sundays and Mondays and between shows, so check what is on before you set out.

Stage, music and film

The Athens Epidaurus Festival, set up in 1955, is Greece's great performing arts festival. Its venues include Peiraios 260 in Athens and the Ancient Theatre and Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus in the Peloponnese. Its historic Athens stage, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, was built in AD 161 and holds about 5,000 people; it has been closed for restoration works since autumn 2025.

Through the year, the National Theatre of Greece plays in the Ziller Building on Agiou Konstantinou Street and at the Rex Theatre, the Onassis Stegi presents new theatre, dance and music on Syngrou Avenue, and Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall hosts orchestras and recitals on Vasilissis Sofias. In Plaka, the Maria Callas Museum, opened by the City of Athens in 2023, tells the soprano's story over four floors.

And then there are the open-air cinemas. Aigli, in the gardens of the Zappeion, has shown films since 1903; Cine Paris has been on its Plaka rooftop since 1920; and Cine Thisio, open since 1935, puts the floodlit Parthenon above the screen. The summer cinemas close for the winter, while the city's indoor cinemas and the Greek Film Archive by Kerameikos keep going all year.

Cultural calendar

Athens Epidaurus Festival: the 2026 edition's programme, venues and tickets are on the festival's own website, aefestival.gr.

Athens International Film Festival: the 32nd edition's programme and daily schedule are on aiff.gr.

Greek National Opera: the current season's opera, ballet and concerts at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center are on nationalopera.gr.

The open-air cinema season: Aigli's season usually runs to the end of October; most other summer cinemas reopen in spring.

What's new

EMST has received the European Museum Academy's Art Museum Award 2026, recognising the social role of art museums. Checked October 2026 on emst.gr.

On the coast at the former airport, The Ellinikon's Experience Park and Sports Park are open to visitors, and the plan includes the Riviera Tower, a residential tower designed by Foster + Partners. Checked October 2026 on theellinikon.com.gr.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus remains closed for restoration works, with no reopening date announced. Checked October 2026.

Our advice: give the ancient sites your mornings, the museums your afternoons, and the galleries of Kolonaki, Thiseio and Metaxourgeio a slow weekday, then finish under the stars at a summer cinema or with a night at the opera by the sea.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Athens Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story before you go.