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National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Address: 28 Oktovriou (Patission) 44, Athens; Tel: +30 210 821-7717. Directions: It is five minute walk from Viktoria station and a 10 minute walk from Omonia stationOpen: April to October 15, Monday 12:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; October 16 to March, Monday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Admission: Adults: €6, Students and Children under 6: Free

Tip: The museum houses a large recently renovated gift shop with artifact replicas and a popular cafe for tourists in the sculpture garden

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens (Greek: Εθνικο Αρχαιολογικο Μουσειο) in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the great museums in the world and contains the richest collection of artifacts from the Greek antiquity worldwide . It is situated in the Exarhia area in central Athens between the streets Epirus, Bouboulina and Tositsa while its entrance is on the Patission Avenue adjacent to the historical building of the Athens Polytechnic.

Alternative holidays Archaelogical sites

Kerameikos

Kerameikos is an area of Athens, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the city walls, on both sides of the Dipylon (Διπυλον) Gate and by the banks of the Eridanos River. It was the potters’ quarter of the city, from which the English word “ceramic” is derived, and was also the site of an important cemetery and numerous funerary sculptures erected along the road out of the city.

Athens Alternative holidays

National Garden of Athens

Address: East of Vasilissis Amalias, between Vasilissis Olgas and Vasilissis Sofias; Tel: 210 721-5019.Open: Monday to Sunday, 7:00 a.m. to sunset

The National Garden (formerly the Royal Garden) (Greek: Εθνικος Κηπος) is a peaceful, green refuge of 15.5 hectares in the center of the Greek capital. It is located directly behind the Greek Parliament building (The Old Palace) and continues to the south to the area where the Zappeion is located, across from the Panathenaiko or Kalimarmaro Olympic Stadium of the 1896 Olympic Games. The Garden also encloses some ancient ruins, tambours and Corinthian capitals of columns, mosaics, and other features. On the south-east there are the busts of Capodistrias, the first governor of Greece and of the great Philhellene, Eynard, and on the south side of the celebrated Greek poets Dionysios Solomos, author of the Greek National Hymn, and Aristotelis Valaoritis.

Henry Miller wrote in 1939

“It remains in my memory like no other park I have known. It is the quintessence of a park, the thing one feels sometimes in looking at a canvas or dreaming of a place one would like to be in and never finds.”

Religious holidays Alternative holidays Athens Monasteries in Greece

Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens

Annunciation Cathedral, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, popularly known as the “Metrópolis”, is the cathedral church of the Archbishop of Athens and all Greece.

Construction of the Cathedral began on Christmas Day, 1842 with the laying of the cornerstone by King Otto and Queen Amalia.

Workers used marble from 72 demolished churches to build the Cathedral’s immense walls. Three architects and 20 years later, it was complete. On May 21, 1862, the completed Cathedral was dedicated to the Annunciation of the Mother of God by the King and Queen. The Cathedral is a three aisle, domed basilica that measures 130 feet (40 m) long, 65 feet (20 m) wide, and 80 feet (24 m) high. Inside are the tombs of two saints killed by the Ottoman Turks during the Turkish Occupation: Saint Philothei and Patriarch Gregory V.

Saint Philothei built a convent, was martyred in 1559, and her bones are still visible in a silver reliquary. She is honored for ransoming Greek women enslaved in Turkish harems.

Gregory V the Ethnomartyr, Patriarch of Constantinople, was hung by order of Turkish Sultan Mahmud II and his body thrown into the Bosphorus in 1821, in retaliation for the Greek uprising on March 25, leading to the Greek War of Independence. His body was rescued by Greek sailors and eventually enshrined in Athens.

To the immediate north of the Cathedral is the little Church of St. Eleftherios also called the “Little Mitropoli.”

In the Square in front of the Cathedral stand two statues. The first is that of Saint Constantine XI the Ethnomartyr, the last Byzantine Emperor. The second is a statue of Archbishop Damaskinos who was Archbishop of Athens during World War II and was Regent for King George II and Prime Minister of Greece in 1946.

The Metropolitan Cathedral remains a major landmark in Athens and the site of important ceremonies with national political figures present, as well as weddings and funerals of the rich and famous.

Currently, the Cathedral is going under renovation. Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens announced at the beginning of 2009 that the Cathedral will be closed for a year due to a revamp.