East of the National Garden — the Athenian neighbourhood, with three of the city’s best traditional restaurants on a single block, and the marble Panathenaic stadium at its edge.
Pangrati sits behind the Panathenaic Stadium — five blocks of 1950s Athenian apartment buildings, a flagstone main street (Spyrou Merkouri), a 1900s church on a small square, and the densest cluster of traditional Athenian restaurants in the city.
Pangrati does not work as a place to stay — there is no metro, the streets are working-Athenian, the hotels are few and tired. It works as the place you take a taxi to for dinner. The single block of Spyrou Merkouri and Plataion contains four of the city’s most-loved restaurants: Karavitis (1932; lamb chops on charcoal, retsina from the barrel, paper-tablecloth, no English menu); Diporto (concrete-floor cellar, no menu, the cook tells you what’s in the pot); Mavro Provato (‘the black sheep’; small modern Greek with a vegetable focus); Cinque (natural-wine bar with serious small plates). Add the First Cemetery of Athens (1837, where Heinrich Schliemann is buried under a temple-front he designed himself) at the western edge, the Panathenaic Stadium (1896 marble) at the south-western edge, the small Pangrati Sunday market on Plataion, and the cinema (Riviera) in the central square — and you have one of the best evening neighbourhoods in any European city.
An eating-led Pangrati evening.
The third-wave café on Erifilis — slow espresso, the Pangrati papers, a notebook.
Twenty minutes among the cypresses and the marble — Schliemann, Vembo, Mercouri. Quiet; spiritual; the right pre-dinner walk.
A glass of natural Greek white at the Plataion bar — the Athenian pre-dinner moment, on the pavement, an hour.
Pre-booked. Two-and-a-half-hour modern-Greek menu, vegetable-led, natural wine, €40 per head.
Walk five minutes back; one last natural-wine glass on Plataion; observe the Athenian after-midnight street.
Five minutes by taxi; the after-Athens half-hour of city through the window.
On foot, within ten minutes.
Three minutes' walk west — the marble Olympic stadium. Same loop as the National Garden.
Five minutes' walk west — the 1837 cemetery, with Schliemann under a Doric temple-front he designed. Free.
Ten minutes' walk west — the old royal garden behind Syntagma. Detail on the Syntagma page.
Five minutes' walk south — the smaller, sleepier Pangrati cousin, with the Athens Technopolis cultural complex on its edge.
Fifteen minutes' walk north-west — the upmarket gallery-and-restaurant district. Detail on the Lycabettus page.
Tell us a little about the trip you want — pace, who's coming, how you'd like to spend your mornings. We'll build the days.
