Gounaropoulos Museum

This venue attracts world-famous artists all year round.

It's one of Greece's main art institutions and features paintings and works of art from some of Greece's and Europe's best from the 19th and 20th centuries. Emphasis is given to popular Greek contemporary artists including Giannis Tsarouchis, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (a.k.a. El Greco), Theodors Vrizakis, Nikolaos Kounelakis, Nikiforos Litras, Konstantinos Parthenis, Maleas, Giannis Moralis and others.

The National War Museum is the only significant surviving public project of the military dictatorship which ruled Greece 1967 - 1974. The museum's displays are old fashioned and biased towards the more successful periods of Greek military history. The tanks, artillery guns and aircraft on display outside the museum form the most interesting part of its collection, and can be visited for free. Perhaps the only internationally famous object in the collection is the portrait of Lord Byron in hellenic dress.

An ancient temple here hosted lectures by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and early meetings of the Athenian Assembly. Aristotle made the temple the home of his school, the Lyceum. It hosted the world's first zoo and botanical garden, as well as a library which preserved classical Greek works for centuries afterwards. Rediscovered in 1996, the site can now be viewed outdoors. Entrance is from the north, from the same entrance as for the Byzantine and Christian museum.

Holds the second largest collection of Cypriot antiquities in the world outside Cyprus, after the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Some of the most popular exhibits include the Cycladic figurines, the idols from Early Bronze Age Cyclades, whose style greatly influenced modernist work in the 20th century, and Cypriot pottery and Ancient Greek artifacts, especially the ‘Scenes of Daily Life in Ancient Greece’ display, which is popular with families. They also sell great souvenirs, and lunch is available at the elegant Aethrion Café. If you are lucky, there may be a quirky temporary exhibition too (with no extra entry fee), as they hold archaeological, modern and contemporary art exhibitions.

A 200m hill bordering the Kolonaki district. You can reach the top by walking (the path starts 15 minutes from Evangelismos metro stop, and will take 30 minutes to walk up the winding, but paved and not steep, path) or by a funicular railway (€10 single/€13 return trip). From halfway up looking towards the sea there are astonishing views of the Parthenon with the blue of the sea glimpsed between its columns. And from the top you can see the whole city, the port of Piraeus and, on a clear day, the island of Aegina and the Peloponnese. Have a drink at the cafe there, and visit the chapel of St George.