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Greece

7 city guides · Europe

Cities in Greece (7)

Europe
🇬🇷 Greece

Athens

Athens (Αθήνα — the city named for Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, who won it from Poseidon in a contest by gifting the olive tree) is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe (3,500 years of documented habitation) and the birthplace of democracy, philosophy, theatre, the Olympic Games and much of Western civilization. The Acropolis (the Sacred Rock above the city — the Parthenon (447–438 BC, the most perfect building ever designed), the Erechtheion (with the Caryatids — the porch supported by female figures), the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaea gateway) is the most important ancient monument in the world and one of the most emotionally overwhelming sites a human can visit. Modern Athens (3.6 million in Greater Athens) is a city completely transformed since the 2004 Olympic Games: the Acropolis Museum (2009 — one of the greatest purpose-built museums anywhere), the pedestrianized archaeological promenade connecting all the major ancient sites, and the food scene of the Monastiraki and Psiri neighbourhoods have made Athens one of the most compelling city-break destinations in Europe. Greek food is the most misunderstood of all Mediterranean cuisines: the souvlaki (the street pita wrap with pork or chicken, tomato, onion, tzatziki and paprika crisps), the gigantes (giant baked beans in tomato), the taramosalata (fish roe spread), and the mezze culture of small plates is far more sophisticated than the tourist beach-resort version suggests.

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Corfu

Corfu (Kerkyra — population 102,000, the most populous of the Ionian Islands) is the most beautiful and the most historically cosmopolitan Greek island — the only Greek island never to have been part of the Ottoman Empire (the most important political distinction in Greek island history: while the majority of the Greek Aegean islands were under Ottoman rule from the 14th–19th centuries, Corfu was under Venetian rule from 1386 to 1797 — the most architecturally transformative ruling power in Corfu history: the Venetian architectural legacy (the most elaborate Italian-influenced architecture on any Greek island) makes Corfu the most distinctively Italian-looking Greek city). The Corfu Old Town (UNESCO World Heritage Site 2007: the most perfectly preserved Venetian colonial town in the eastern Mediterranean) with the most important Venetian fortifications in the Greek world (the Old Fortress (Palaio Frourio) and the New Fortress (Neo Frourio)), the most beautiful esplanade in Greece (the Spianada — the largest square in Greece), and the most spectacular natural landscape in the Ionian Islands (the verdant Pantokrator mountain, the most beautiful sandy beaches (Paleokastritsa — the most beautiful beach in Greece according to the most consistent travel rankings) and the most lush green countryside (Corfu is the most thickly forested of all the major Greek islands — the most trees per hectare of any populated Greek island)) make Corfu the most complete single Mediterranean island destination.

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Corinth

Ancient Corinth (modern Korinthos — population 58,000) sits on the narrow isthmus connecting mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, one of the most strategically important locations in the ancient world. The city controlled two seas — the Saronic Gulf (facing Athens) and the Corinthian Gulf (facing Italy) — making it the most commercially powerful city-state in archaic Greece. At its height in the 7th–6th centuries BCE, Corinth was larger than Athens and rivaled it as the most prosperous Greek city. The Temple of Apollo (one of the oldest Doric temples in Greece, 550 BCE — seven columns still standing), the Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth (one of the finest in Greece), the Acrocorinth (the most impressive ancient hilltop fortress in the Peloponnese, rising 575m above the plain) and the Diolkos (the ancient stone slipway used to drag ships overland across the isthmus) make Ancient Corinth one of the most historically rich day-trip or short-stay destinations in Greece.

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Heraklion

Heraklion (Ηράκλειο) is the capital of Crete and the largest city in the eastern Mediterranean island arc — 175,000 people on the north-central coast of the largest Greek island, a port city that has been occupied continuously since at least 3000 BCE and ruled successively by Minoans, Mycenaeans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs (who built the original harbour fortress in 824 CE and named it Al-Khandak — the ditch — from which 'Candia', the medieval name of the island, derives), Venetians (1204–1669, who rebuilt the city walls and constructed the Koules fortress that still dominates the harbour), and Ottomans (1669–1898, when Crete was the last major Ottoman acquisition in the Aegean). The city holds the Heraklion Archaeological Museum — the most important museum of Minoan civilisation in the world (the Minoan culture of 3000–1100 BCE was the first advanced civilisation of Europe, preceding classical Greece by a millennium, and its art — the Minoan frescoes, the Snake Goddess figurines, the bull-leaping images — is unlike anything in the ancient Mediterranean). Fifteen kilometres south is Knossos, the Minoan palace complex (1900–1400 BCE, the largest Bronze Age palace in the Aegean, excavated and controversially reconstructed in concrete by Arthur Evans 1900–1935). Best months: April–June and September–October.

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Oia

Oia is the most photographed village on Santorini and arguably the most photographed sunset location on earth — the cascading white cube houses with blue domes clinging to the volcanic caldera rim 350 metres above the Aegean Sea produce images so perfectly composed that they appear almost artificial, yet they are entirely real and entirely inhabited. Santorini (ancient Thera) is the remnant of a massive volcanic caldera formed by the Minoan eruption around 1600 BCE — one of the largest volcanic events in recorded human history, which may have caused the collapse of the Minoan civilisation of Crete and triggered the myth of Atlantis. The island sits on the rim of a still-active submarine caldera with the youngest volcanic island in Europe (Nea Kameni, still steaming) visible in the centre. Oia sits at the northern tip of the caldera rim, 11 km from the capital Fira, and its sunset viewpoint above the Byzantine castle ruins has become so famous that crowds of 1,000–2,000 people gather nightly in summer to applaud the moment the sun drops below the horizon — a phenomenon that is both extraordinary and a victim of its own success. Beyond the sunset icon, Oia rewards the early riser: the blue-domed churches (particularly the three churches at Amoudi Bay below the village), the yposkafes (cave houses carved into the volcanic pumice cliff), the Skaros Rock hike from Imerovigli, and the Thirassia island opposite accessible by boat. Santorini wine (Assyrtiko grapes grown in basket vines low to the ground to resist the famous Meltemi winds) is among Greece's finest; the tomato fritters (tomatokeftedes), yellow split peas (fava) and Santorini salad are distinct from mainland Greek cuisine.

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Paros

Paros is the second most visited island of the Cyclades after Santorini, a Greek island of 15,000 permanent residents famous for three distinct qualities: its marble (the Parian marble used for Praxiteles's Aphrodite of Knidos, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo was quarried in the mountains of Paros for 3,000 years), its windsurfing conditions (the Naoussa Bay and the Santa Maria area have the most reliable summer winds in the Aegean, attracting windsurfers from across Europe), and its traditional Cycladic architecture (the village of Naoussa with its white walls, blue domes and bougainvillea-covered lanes is slightly less famous than Mykonos or Oia but arguably more authentic and less crowded). The capital Parikia has the Panagia Ekatontapiliani (Church of 100 Doors, 4th century CE, one of the best-preserved Byzantine churches in Greece, built on the spot where Helen of Troy's mother Helena reportedly landed in 326 CE during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land) and the ruins of a Venetian castle built from the marble blocks of an earlier Temple of Aphrodite. Antiparos (connected by a 10-minute ferry from the small port south of Parikia) is a quieter island with a remarkable cave (Antiparos Cave, stalactite formations with a depth of 100 m) and the beach community of Sifneikos Agros that has attracted artists and writers since the 1970s (Tom Hanks has a home on Antiparos). Paros is also the geographic centre of the Cyclades, making it the best base for island hopping by high-speed ferry to Naxos (30 min), Santorini (2h) and Mykonos (1h30).

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Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki (Θεσσαλονίκη — founded 315 BCE by the Macedonian king Cassander and named after his wife Thessalonike (the half-sister of Alexander the Great); population 326,000 city, 1.1 million metropolitan area) is Greece's second-largest city and the cultural capital of the northern Balkans — the city with the most complex multi-civilisational history in southeastern Europe (the successive dominations: Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman (1430-1912) and modern Greek) have left a denser concentration of UNESCO World Heritage monuments than any other city in Greece except Athens. The 15 Early Christian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki (UNESCO World Heritage 1988) include the Rotunda (built by the Roman emperor Galerius in approximately 300 CE as his mausoleum — the largest surviving Roman circular building in the Balkans, with the finest 4th-5th century CE Byzantine mosaic programme in the world still in situ in the dome); the Arch of Galerius (303 CE — the triumphal arch commemorating Galerius's victory over the Persians (the Sassanid king Narseh)); the Hagia Sophia (the 8th-century Byzantine church with the finest Byzantine mosaic programme in Thessaloniki — the 9th-century mosaics survived the Ottoman period because the church was converted to a mosque in 1523 and the Islamic prohibition of figurative art led the Ottomans to plaster over rather than destroy the mosaics); and the White Tower (the 15th-century Ottoman defensive tower on the Thermaic Gulf waterfront — now the symbol of the city and its principal museum). Thessaloniki has an extraordinary Jewish history: before the Holocaust, the city had the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world (the approximately 80,000 Sephardic Jews who had lived in Thessaloniki since their expulsion from Spain in 1492 by the Edict of Granada constituted approximately 50% of the city's total population in 1900; the city was known as "La Madre de Israel" (the Mother of Israel) in the Sephardic tradition; the entire community was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and approximately 96% (approximately 54,000 people) were murdered). Thessaloniki is also the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 — the founding president of the Turkish Republic).

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