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Tourist information - Athens
Athens is not a graceful city. It looks ungainly from just about every approach, its air pollution is dire, its postwar architecture is a disaster, and traffic still clogs the streets despite the recent expansion of the metro. For many of the four million-plus visitors who pass through each year, Athens can seem a dutiful stop. Their priorities usually include visits to the Acropolis and the National Archeological Museum and an evening or two dining in the tavernas of Pláka, one of the few surviving old quarters. Most tourists then get out fast, disillusioned with such sparse evidence of the past and so little apparent charm.
Such are the basic facts - yet somehow the city has the character to transcend them. An exhausting but always stimulating mix of metropolis and backwater, First and Third World, West and East, Greater Athens has seen its population soar from 700,000 to well over four million - over a third of the nation's people - since World War II. The pace of this transformation is reflected in the city's chaotic mix of urban and rural: chickens roost in yards with state-of-the-art cars parked nearby, while eastern-style bazaars vie for space with outlets for Armani and Benetton. And the city's hectic modernity is tempered with an air of intimacy and hominess; as any Greek will tell you, Athens is merely the largest village in the country.
Once you accept this, you'll find that the ancient sites and the Acropolis - supreme monument though it is - are only the most obvious of Athens' attractions . There are startling views to be had from the hills of Lykavitos and Filopappou ; and, around the foot of the Acropolis, the Plaka has scattered monuments of the Byzantine and medieval town that seemed so exotic to Byron and the Romantics. As you might expect, the city also offers some of the best eating to be found in Greece, with a number of beautiful cafes, garden tavernas and street markets - as well as the most varied nightlife, including traditional music and films in the winter months, and open-air cinema, concerts and classical drama in summer.
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