January 12, 2021

Athens city tour panoramic.

Written By juan alfredo escobar

• Spend the day being introduced to the archaeological sites by your Athens tour guide, including the Acropolis, Parthenon, and the Panathenaic Stadium.

• Stop by Syntagma Square and, if you’re lucky, watch the changing of the guards near the Parliament House.

• Visit Kastella with its winding streets and 19th-century mansions.

• Make your way over to Panathenaic Stadium, or Kallimarmaro (“beautiful marble”), the only one in the world made entirely of marble. Athenian Roman Senator Herodes Atticus rebuilt the original stadium in marble in 144 CE with a capacity of 50,000 seats. Largely abandoned a few centuries later with the rise of Christianity, the stadium was excavated in the 19th century and put back into use as an Olympic venue in 2004.

• Explore the Temple of Zeus and you will see 16 of its 104 giant Corinthian columns that survived invasions and quarries of the temple for building materials. This temple took 638 years to complete and was the largest one in Greece.

• Travel to Syntagma Square, the central square in Athens that has been the place of celebration, mourning, demonstrations, and battles for Grecians over the centuries.

• Depending on the time you might be able to catch the changing of the guard at the site of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of Parliament House.

• Examine the Acropolis of Athens, an ancient citadel located on a flat-topped rock high above the city. In the Acropolis, you will find several significant ancient buildings, the most famous among them being the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike.

• Relax and enjoy some shopping in Plaka, a hillside village down from the Acropolis that is the oldest section in Athens.

• Walk along the narrow cobblestone streets, pop into the tiny shops for a souvenir or two, and stop for a cup of coffee at one of the sidewalk cafes.