An Art Lover’s Guide to Athens

Change is afoot in Athens. The past decade has seen the city steadily building some serious cultural clout as artists are increasingly squeezed out of other European capitals and drawn, moth-like, to the glowing promise of more affordable rent and plenty of studio space in the city.

The story is a familiar one—but don’t call Athens the new Berlin. While both might be concrete jungles of post-war architecture, the charm of Athens comes down to its Mediterranean flair and pervasive sense of sunny chaos that feels a world apart from the German capital. “It is nothing like Berlin,” said Artemis Baltoyanni, founder of local gallery The Intermission. “But nowadays we do have a lot more art spaces showing both local and international artists. And a more diverse audience, too.”

With so much new creative energy stirring in the historic city, we’ve compiled a guide to the local art scene. These are the must-visit galleries, museums, public art installations, and art world haunts in Athens.

Athens galleries

Art world titans rub shoulders with DIY spaces in the Greek capital. The scene was afforded a huge boost when the 14th edition of Documenta descended in 2017, bringing with it a wave of global attention and an influx of international visitors. The event not only highlighted Athens as a significant cultural hub, but also catalyzed the growth of new galleries and artist-run spaces.

Downtown Athens

Clustered around the foot of the Acropolis are a series of neighborhoods with very different personalities. A stone’s throw from the tourist shops and ancient ruins of Monastiraki is gritty Metaxourgeio, an ex-industrial neighborhood hit particularly hard by urban decline in the wake of the financial crash. A short walk south will take you to Petralona, a leafy residential neighborhood with a growing number of excellent restaurants and bars leading the reinvigoration of the Athenian drinking and dining scene. A wander across these adjoining areas will take you between plenty of art spaces occupying everything from grand Neoclassical townhouses to former factories and workshops.

• The Breeder: Housed in a converted ice cream factory, The Breeder has gained international acclaim for exhibitions that distill the brightest and best of the Athenian art scene. The gallery’s roster includes the likes of Aristeidis Lappas and Theo Triantafyllidis.
• Melas Martinos: In this luminous top-floor space overlooking the Parthenon, curator Andreas Melas showcases contemporary and 20th-century works from Greek creatives alongside international artists such as Ken Price and Nuri Koerfer.

• Rebecca Camhi: Founded in 1995, Rebecca Camhi is housed in a stately, Neoclassical townhouse in Metaxourgeio and has exhibited work by artists ranging from Nobuyoshi Araki to Sylvie Fleury, as well as a mix of young, local talent.
• Alkinois: Curator Alix Janta-Polczynski’s gallery in a former furniture workshop in Petralona runs an artist residency that invites international artists to come and make work within the space. Alumni of the program include Faye Wei Wei and Marco Villard.

Kolonaki

Kolonaki is Athens at its most upscale. But it’s far from flashy; there’s a sense of old-school charm here amid grand apartment blocks, Neoclassical mansions, and tree-lined boulevards nestled into the southern slope of Lycabettus Hill. The art scene here is more established, generally catering more to the tastes of well-heeled Athenians than other, more experimental galleries found elsewhere in the city.

• Gagosian: Art world behemoth Larry Gagosian has 19 galleries worldwide. His Athenian outpost is housed in a stately villa on the corner of a leafy Kolonaki square and showcases work from his international roster of big-hitters.
• Michael Werner Gallery: Earlier this year, Athens joined Berlin, New York, London, and Los Angeles in becoming home to an outpost of Michael Werner Gallery. Its opening was marked with a show featuring gallery artists Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, and others.

Piraeus

Piraeus might technically be a separate city from Athens, but you wouldn’t know it. Urban overspill means the two have merged over the years. Today, it feels more like a suburb than a separate entity. In any case, it’s only a 15-minute drive (or a few metro stops) between the center of Athens and the port of Piraeus. It’s one of the busiest ports in Europe, with a maritime legacy that stretches back thousands of years.

Recent years have seen Piraeus building its cultural heft. An array of galleries have sprung up there, particularly in the warehouses and ex-industrial buildings that fill the portside neighborhood of Agios Dionysios.

• Sylvia Kouvali: Gallerist Sylvia Kouvali has two spaces: one in London’s Mayfair neighborhood and the other in a former warehouse in the heart of Piraeus. Previously called Rodeo, the gallery hosts exhibitions featuring underrecognized artists, many from the eastern Mediterranean.
• The Intermission: Art advisor Artemis Baltoyanni opened her project space, The Intermission, in a former car workshop in 2019. Rather than having her own roster, Baltoyanni partners with other galleries to present shows by their artists—often giving these artists their first presentations in Greece. Past collaborators include Chapter NY and Paris’s Fitzpatrick Gallery.
• Carwan Gallery: This contemporary design gallery was founded in Beirut in 2011, and moved to Piraeus in 2020. Its shows focus largely on conceptual pieces from Western Asia and across the Mediterranean.

Kypseli

Kypseli takes its name from the Greek word for “beehive”—a fitting description for this buzzy, urban warren. Much of the area was constructed during the mid–20th century, when wealthy residents flocked there to live in freshly constructed apartment blocks. But towards the end of the century, they had all but abandoned the neighborhood in favor of leafy suburban living. What followed was a spiral of urban decline, intensified even further by the financial crisis around 2007.

The last decade, however, has seen a string of initiatives reinvigorate the neighborhood. Low rents and plenty of empty spaces have also helped draw in the creative crowd, and Kypseli is today brimming with studios and galleries. Here, you can get a taste of everything up-and-coming in the Athenian scene.

• P.E.T. Projects: In addition to hosting exhibitions within the space, P.E.T. Projects founder Angelo Plessas uses his gallery for salon-like gatherings of curators and artists. Its name is a playful reference to Plessas’s love of animals, and his dog Alba is often spotted at the gallery with him. “I see it as a cultural shelter,” Plessas told Artsy. “The idea is to bring together people who are under the radar here in Greece.” An artist himself, Plessas has exhibited his own work in the space.
• Hot Wheels: This contemporary art space, located in a Neoclassical apartment overlooking Athens Polytechnic, was founded by British gallerists Hugo Wheeler and Julia Gardener, who opened a second location in London in 2023.
• Okay Space: Founded in 2022 by Stavros Kapetanios, Okay Space is housed in a former kafeneio (traditional coffee shop) and hosts shows that support the local scene by championing under-the-radar artists.

Public art in Athens

From majestic statues of notable statesmen to large-scale conceptual works from big-name Greek artists, the public artworks dotted around Athens point to different facets of the city’s storied past and vibrant present.

• Metro stations: In preparation for the opening of the Athenian metro in the early 2000s, prominent Greek artists were drafted in to create site-specific works to decorate the stations. Highlights include Yannis Gaïtis’s signature, bowler hat–wearing figures on the walls of Larissa station and colorful street scenes by Alekos Fassianos at Metaxourgeio.
• Extropic Optimisms: A series of technicolor neon symbols created by local artist Angelo Plessas (of P.E.T. Projects) adorn the wall of an apartment block near Victoria station. “They’re a mixture of Indigenous and ancient folk symbols, as well as some cybernetic iconography,” said Plessas, who worked with curator George Bekirakis and cultural organization Onassis Stegi on the piece. “They come together to represent all the different aspects of a human’s well-being.”
• Fontana Thesee: At the center of a fountain on Kotzia Square, opposite City Hall, sits a hulking, geometric piece created by Colombian artist Fernando Botero and his Greek wife, sculptor Sophia Vari. The sculpture is an abstract representation of the Greek hero Theseus.
• Memorial of National Reconciliation: Vassilis Doropoulos’s monumental 1989 statue features three bronze figures with their arms extended overhead and figures intertwined. It was conceived as a symbol of unity and healing after the Greek Civil War.

Athens museums

It comes as no surprise that Athens, the cradle of Western civilization, boasts various world-class museums offering a deep dive into the ancient world. But it’s not all marble and deities—there’s also a wide range of institutions showcasing a more contemporary and colorful side of Greek culture.

• Alekos Fassianos Museum: This new Metaxourgeio space dedicated to the late Alekos Fassianos, an artist known for his colorful paintings and lithographs inspired by Greek mythology and Athenian street life, opened in 2023.
• EMST (National Museum of Contemporary Art): Housed in a former 1950s brewery in Koukaki, the museum puts the spotlight on conceptual Greek art from the 20th century. Its collection includes works by Arte Povera master Jannis Kounellis and internationally acclaimed painter Vlassis Caniaris.

• Benaki Museum of Islamic Art: This extensive collection of artifacts from Islamic civilizations spans from the 7th to the 19th centuries and features exquisite ceramics, textiles, and manuscripts.
• National Archeological Museum: One of the world’s finest collections of ancient artifacts is housed in this Neoclassical landmark. Highlights include the golden mask of Agamemnon and the Artemision Bronze—a statue of Zeus recovered from the bottom of the sea.

Art world haunts

Athens is a village. Or at least, according to the creative community it is. The everybody-knows-everybody culture is fostered by the fact that downtown Athens isn’t enormous (don’t be fooled by the seemingly infinite sprawl of residential neighborhoods that spill out from the core). These restaurants, bars, and shops in particular have a magnetic pull on the arts crowd.

• Adad Books: In a pint-sized shop on the corner of leafy Merkouri square is Adad, a bookstore and cafe founded by Alix Janta-Polczynski (who runs the nearby gallery Alkinois). It’s a cozy spot to sip locally roasted coffee and browse titles from independent publishers.
• Pharaoh: This slick new restaurant and wine bar serves a particularly refined version of seasonally changing Greek cuisine, much of it prepared on charcoal grills or in wood-fired ovens. Local DJs are often on hand for live vinyl sets.