Monastiraki: the back story

About Monastiraki: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Athens Editorial Team

Monastiraki is where Athens has always come to trade. Within a few minutes’ walk of its busy square lie the marketplace of ancient Athens, a Roman library, an Ottoman mosque, a Byzantine church and the flea market, and on summer evenings its rooftop bars fill with people watching the sun set behind the Parthenon.

The ancient marketplace

For more than a thousand years, the Ancient Agora, just west of today’s square, was the heart of public life in Athens. Here citizens met to trade, debate and vote, philosophers taught in its colonnades, and Socrates questioned anyone who would listen. Above it stands the Temple of Hephaestus, one of the best-preserved ancient Greek temples anywhere, and along one side the Stoa of Attalos, rebuilt in the 1950s to house the Agora Museum.

Nearby, the Roman emperor Hadrian built a great library in AD 132, a courtyard surrounded by columns, with reading rooms and a garden pool. Its massive western wall and columns still line the street just off the square.

Monastiraki is where Athens has always come to trade.

The little monastery

The square takes its name from the small church of the Pantanassa, which once belonged to a convent: monastiraki means “little monastery”. Under Ottoman rule, the streets around it were the town’s bazaar, full of workshops and stalls, and in 1759 the Ottoman governor of Athens built the mosque that still stands on the square. According to a well-known story, he burned a column from the Temple of Olympian Zeus to make lime for its walls. Today the Tzistarakis Mosque houses a collection of folk ceramics.

The flea market

The tradition of trading lives on in the flea market streets around Ifestou, named after Hephaestus, the god of metalworkers, where coppersmiths once worked. Today you can browse antiques, old records, military surplus, leather sandals and every kind of curiosity, and on Sundays the dealers spread out around Avissinias Square. Below the square, the metro station, on the line built in 1869 as the railway to Piraeus, shows the remains of the ancient Eridanos river, uncovered during the excavations for the modern metro.

Psyrri and the rooftops

Just north of the square, Psyrri was for generations a neighbourhood of small workshops and craftsmen. Since the late 1990s it has become one of the liveliest places in Athens to eat and drink, with mezze tavernas, street art and bars around Iroon Square. All around Monastiraki, rooftop bars and terraces look straight across to the Acropolis, and at sunset there are few better places in the city to be.

Our advice: visit the Ancient Agora early in the morning, browse the flea market before lunch, especially on a Sunday, and come back for a rooftop drink at sunset. Monastiraki gets very crowded, so keep an eye on your bags and phones around the square and in the metro.

Through the years

Dates from the histories of the monuments and the city.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Monastiraki: the back story before you go.