Spotlight on Athens
The secret to exploring the city
Dropping into Athens feels like a distinctly disorienting dive across time. You have a modern concrete urban tangle that can feel as charming as Los Angeles, if you know what I mean, and a level of traffic noise that doesn’t exactly evoke thoughts of ancient Greek philosophers luxuriating under a fig tree. But steady on and you might find yourself in a quiet lane lined with Easter egg-colored neoclassical houses, maybe some broken columns laying about and looming over everything the Acropolis, atop which of course is the Parthenon, which even in ruins rocks a monumental, seen-it-all-before vibe. This is a worldly metropolis and above all a city of layers, which means complexity and intrigue in varying proportions. You can amble about the sun kissed ancient Agora which is like a delicious olive tree orchard literally littered with the relics in marble and stone that served as backdrop to the events and ideas that pushed civilization forward, be dumbstruck by the Temple of Hephaestus or the view to Piraeus from the top of the Areopagus Hill or lose yourself in the antechambers of the big archaeology museum (still the best), then rouse some other senses in the spice market quarter or Monastiraki, where the Athenian youths gravitate and by nightfall make all their own. (Loudly.) Wandering around the historic and fairly compact center you will always be surprised, whether it’s a gourmet souvlaki or even Lebanese takeaway or astonishing blast of street art or just another cafe that invites you to sit down with a strong Greek coffee or shot of sweet mastiha and indulge in the Athenian sport so legendary it should be in the Olympics—the art of taking your time.
And that is the secret to exploring the four thousand (five thousand?) year old city: slowing down. The only other city in Europe where you can do this is maybe Venice. True you can can downshift in Paris or Rome but for various reasons never for very long in either. Athens can and does move to a quick beat, and Athenian businessmen are amongst the sharpest in Europe, but then again a city so darn old can and does play with the present like a cat paws a mouse. Appointments, fortunes and sundry rendezvous will come and go, but at the end of the day the Acropolis will still be there. So really, what’s the hurry?
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