Teleporio™ — Greek Island Travel Intelligence

Hidden Athens

Discover the Athens that most visitors miss. Anafiotika's Cycladic lanes, Byzantine churches at traffic intersections, hidden courtyards, forgotten hills, and islands within reach.

The Athens Most Visitors Never Find

Behind the tourist circuit — the Acropolis queue, the Plaka restaurants, the photo spots — Athens has a parallel city of extraordinary interest. Anafiotika, the whitewashed Cycladic village built into the north slope of the Acropolis in the 1840s, is unknown to most visitors despite being five minutes from the main tourist path. The small Byzantine churches that sit at traffic intersections throughout the city are open to anyone who pushes the door. The hills overlooking the city — Strefi, Tourkovounia, Filopappou — offer views and silence that the famous Lycabettus funicular queue never provides.

Anafiotika — A Cycladic Village in Athens

On the north-eastern slope of the Acropolis, craftsmen from the island of Anafi built their own houses in the 1840s using the Cycladic architecture they knew at home. The lanes are too narrow for cars. Jasmine and bougainvillea cover every surface. The silence is almost complete. The entrance — a narrow stairway off Stratonos Street — is unmarked and easy to miss, which is among the things that make it extraordinary.

The Small Byzantine Churches

Athens has more Byzantine churches than any other city in Greece, and the most interesting are not the famous ones. The Church of Kapnikarea on Ermou Street sits in the middle of the main shopping pedestrian zone like a survivor from a different civilisation — eleventh century, its stone a different colour from everything around it, its interior dark and cool and peaceful. The Church of the Holy Apostles in the Ancient Agora, the Gorgoepikoos beside the Cathedral — these are the churches that reward the visitor who pays attention to what is not in the guidebook.