Plaka: the back story

About Plaka: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Athens Editorial Team

Wrapped around the northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis, Plaka is the Athens of postcards: lanes of neoclassical houses painted in ochre and pink, bougainvillea over the doorways, tavernas on the steps and Byzantine churches at every turn. People have lived here, beneath the rock, for thousands of years.

Beneath the rock

Plaka has been lived in continuously since antiquity, and the ancient city is never far away. Its streets follow paths that are thousands of years old: Tripodon Street, the Street of the Tripods, traces the route of an ancient road where Athenians set up bronze tripods, the prizes won by the sponsors of the best choruses in the city’s drama festivals. One of these monuments still stands, the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, built in 334 BC, an elegant little round temple. In the early 19th century it stood in the garden of a Capuchin monastery, where Lord Byron stayed during his travels.

At the edge of the neighbourhood, the Roman Agora and its Tower of the Winds, an eight-sided marble tower of the 1st century BC that once held a water clock and sundials, show how Athens looked under Rome. To the east, Hadrian’s Arch marks the boundary between the old city and the new quarter built by the emperor Hadrian.

People have lived here, beneath the rock of the Acropolis, for thousands of years.

Byzantine and Ottoman Athens

Through the Middle Ages and the centuries of Ottoman rule, Athens shrank to a small town clustered around the Acropolis, and Plaka was its heart. Its little Byzantine churches, such as Agia Ekaterini and the tiny cathedral of Panagia Gorgoepikoos, known as the Little Metropolis, with ancient carvings set into its walls, date from this long period, when the town had perhaps a few thousand inhabitants.

The new capital

When Athens became the capital of the new Greek state in 1834, architects drew up plans for a modern city, and the wealthy built elegant neoclassical mansions with marble balconies and painted ceilings in the old streets. Many of them survive, restored, and give Plaka much of its charm today.

High on the slope of the Acropolis, a different village grew up. In the 19th century, builders from the Cycladic island of Anafi came to work in the growing capital and built themselves small whitewashed houses on the rock, just like those at home. Anafiotika, as it is called, is still a maze of narrow steps and tiny houses, with cats sunning themselves on the walls, and it feels like an island village in the middle of the city.

Plaka today

In the 1960s and 1970s, Plaka filled with noisy clubs and bars. From the 1980s, restoration and stricter rules gave the old neighbourhood back its gentler character, and many of its streets are now pedestrian. Adrianou and Kydathineon are the busy main streets, lined with shops and tavernas; step one street away and you can find yourself alone in a quiet lane. Small museums are hidden among the houses too, from the Museum of Greek Folk Art to the Museum of Greek Folk Musical Instruments.

Our advice: explore Plaka early in the morning, before the crowds and the heat, or in the evening, when the lanes are lit and the tavernas fill up. Climb to Anafiotika for views across the city, sit down for dinner on the Mnisikleous steps, and remember that the best tables are often one street back from the busiest corners.

Through the years

Dates from the histories of the monuments and the city.

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