The 100 Best Places in Athens

1. The Pinnacle Guide 3 Pins
2. The 50 #8 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #1 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #27 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 Rémy Martin Legend of the List Award 2025 · The World's 50 Best Bars

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. The 50 #47 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #2 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

Athens' first tequilaria, Barro Negro built its identity around agave spirits long before the city caught on. The shelves lean heavily toward tequila and mezcal, sipped neat or shaken into Margaritas, and the bar holds the world's first Paloma Embassy designation, which is as good a reason as any to start there. Ranked on both Europe's and the World's 50 Best Bars lists, it pairs a serious drinks program with tacos, making the argument that this was always a food group.

1. The 50 #62 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #13 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
3. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

The rooftop infinity pool lines up with the Parthenon close enough to feel like a fever dream. This boutique hotel in a neoclassical Plaka building holds a Michelin 2 Keys and a Forbes Four Star, and both feel earned: high ceilings, oversized windows, marble floors, and rooms where the ancient ruins are visible from the bed. The rooftop restaurant adds a panoramic dining option for anyone who needs more Acropolis with their Mediterranean fare.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Bronze bar, trees hanging from the ceiling, and a view straight out to sea: Delta earns its two Michelin stars in a fifth-floor dining room inside the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre. The chef runs a single 12-course creative Greek tasting menu, sustainability-driven and sourced from their own kitchen garden and local fishers. It is unambiguously a special-occasion place, and it looks the part without trying too hard.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The 50 #30 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

A Victorian facade on Syntagma Square, with Acropolis views from the balconies and a rooftop pool that makes a convincing case for never leaving. This grand old luxury hotel has been hosting heads of state and the occasional rock tour for well over a century, and a top-to-bottom restoration brought every oil painting and piece of antique furniture back to full splendor without tipping into museum overload. The Michelin Guide has awarded it 2 Keys.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A tree-lined urban terrace draws the summer crowd to this Michelin-starred modern Mediterranean restaurant in Athens, though the softly lit interior holds its own through cooler months. Chef Alexandros Tsiotinis runs an eleven-course tasting menu whose dishes are kept secret until each one arrives at the table, a theatrical touch that somehow avoids feeling gimmicky. The cooking leans on classical foundations and quietly pulls them apart.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A digital code gets you through the front door, which sets the tone for what follows. Hervé is a Michelin-starred contemporary tasting-menu restaurant where a French chef folds French, Asian, and Italian ideas into a single, composed progression. Watch it come together from the counter, or take the patio when the weather cooperates. The tiled walls and natural stone keep things from feeling precious, even when the cooking clearly is.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Hytra sits inside the garden of the Megaron Music Hall, with a balcony that puts the Acropolis and the Athenian sky directly in front of you. This Michelin-starred modern Greek restaurant grows its own herbs and uses them in everything, including the cocktails. The kitchen leans into fine textures and careful plating, with tasting menus alongside à la carte, one menu going fully vegetarian. Dressy, unhurried, and committed to the view.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A glass floor panel reveals the ancient foundations of what was once Greece's first inn, which sets the tone for what follows at this Michelin-starred creative restaurant at the foot of the Acropolis. The chef draws from the restaurant's own farm and local producers for tasting menus named Genesis, Utopia, and the vegetarian Physis Vegan. Over 300 wine labels, plus cocktail and juice pairings, keep things occupied between courses.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The courtyard of a coastal hotel half an hour from Athens, draped in greenery and far enough from the city to feel like a different country. Patio is a tasting-menu restaurant where the chef runs his own farm, and the produce travels accordingly short distances. Modern Greek cooking with serious technique, a Michelin star, and at the end of the meal a pencil embedded with basil seeds, because sustainability should follow you home.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Before the meal begins, a small presentation of aromatic herbs arrives at the table, many grown by the chef's father. Soil is a single-tasting-menu restaurant with a Michelin star, where the cooking leans hard into Greek landscape and seasonality. You can sit at the chef's table, in the lounge, or in the year-round winter garden. Tasos Mantis finishes certain dishes tableside, and the drinks pairing runs from wine to fresh juices and low-alcohol options.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Vaulted stone dining rooms and candlelit terraces a short walk from the ancient Panathenaic Stadium set the scene for contemporary French cooking that leans heavily on visual presentation. This is a formal, Michelin-starred restaurant with a tasting menu alongside à la carte, attentive service that the room practically insists upon, and a crowd dressed accordingly. Seasonal produce drives the menu, though certain luxury ingredients appear to have permanent residency.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A Michelin-starred rooftop restaurant perched above the Greek Orthodox cathedral with the Acropolis hanging in the background, which is not a bad place to eat dinner. The kitchen runs two tasting menus of contemporary Greek cooking, creative without abandoning the traditions that make Greek food worth the creativity. The wine list leans Greek, the setting leans theatrical, and the evening-only hours keep it from feeling like a tourist lunch stop.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Dinner on the seventh floor of the King George Hotel, with the Acropolis lit up across the rooftops and a pianist somewhere in the background, sets a scene that would feel theatrical if the food didn't hold its own. This fine dining restaurant earns a Michelin star through the chef's contemporary Greek cooking, a short à la carte and a tasting menu. The sommelier is quietly exceptional, the kind who reads the table before making a recommendation.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Murano chandeliers, herringbone floors, and a direct sightline to the Parthenon from Syntagma Square: this 102-room luxury hotel has been one of Athens's more fashionable addresses since it opened. The cream-and-gold rooms have a boutique feel, the walls hang with works by Greek painters, and the neoclassical bones are intact without feeling frozen in time. Voukourestiou Street, the city's main shopping strip, is a short walk away.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Odori built its reputation around vermouth at a time when Athens wasn't paying much attention to it, and the bar has been pulling that thread ever since. Large French windows open onto terrace tables, while inside golden counters, verdant wallpaper, and ornate birdcages create a room that feels like it belongs on a different continent. The drinks list roams through vermouth varieties and brands, including the bar's own, with an eye toward low-ABV and aperitif drinking.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A 38-room boutique hotel sitting directly above a working food market, which means you wake up to a fishmonger and a baker before you've found your shoes. The rooms draw from the building traditions of Pelion, giving them a spare, almost Japanese calm that's entirely coincidental. Some face the marketplace (lively), some face away (not). A Michelin Key. The Parthenon views from certain rooms are, by any measure, an unfair advantage.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A whitewashed Cycladic building clinging to a cliffside a short walk from the chaos of Mykonos Town, Kouros is a 40-room boutique hotel where every room faces the Aegean. The infinity pool bar keeps guests in spritz-fueled suspension above the water, and the spa exists primarily to undo whatever the island's nightlife managed to do. Renovated suites swap the standard all-white for a sharper white-and-black palette with marble throughout.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A luxury boutique hotel in central Athens named for Costas Spiliadis's famous Milos restaurant group, which tells you immediately that the food here is not an afterthought. Rooms walk the line between minimalism and warmth, the small spa handles yoga and Pilates, and Estiatorio Milos draws a crowd of locals who have no reason to eat at a hotel restaurant unless the hotel restaurant is worth the detour. One Michelin Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The rooftop cocktail bar perched above the Monastiraki flea market with the Acropolis filling the horizon is doing a lot of heavy lifting on its own, but the menu still tries to keep up. Drinks are organized around ideas, love and hope and realism, which is either pretentious or charming depending on how many you've had. The spirits range widely, with small Greek breweries and local wines keeping things grounded.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A five-story boutique hotel sitting between the Acropolis and the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, many rooms looking directly onto the toppled columns. Inside, a cascading vertical garden fills the central atrium, and the earthy palette of sage and ivory keeps things grounded while the marble bathrooms and parquet floors handle the luxury end. The rooftop restaurant has its own ornamental gardens and the kind of view that makes dinner feel implausible. Michelin awarded it one Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The building is a late-19th-century Ernst Ziller design, and if you know Athens you know that name is everywhere the city looks good. A small boutique hotel with nine rooms and suites, each one different, period details sitting comfortably next to Scandinavian furniture. Some have balconies, one has an outdoor jacuzzi. There's a spa, a rooftop terrace, and a breakfast serious enough that it could embarrass your lunch. It holds a Michelin Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The building spent its earlier lives as a brothel, a barn, and an army barracks before someone decided to open a hotel in it, and honestly that resume shows. Set around a courtyard of olive trees in Gazi, this Michelin Key boutique hotel has exposed stone walls, antique writing desks, and marble bathrooms without trying to look like anywhere else. A stylish outdoor pool and a kitchen built around house-made olive oil round things out nicely.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A wood-fired oven anchors the menu at this contemporary Italian restaurant near the heart of central Athens, where the kitchen turns out handmade pastas alongside pizzas and meat dishes. The room spreads across three areas, including a terrace and a balcony good for cocktails when the evening cools. The kind of place that draws a broad crowd without trying too hard to please everyone, which is harder than it sounds.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 19th-century neoclassical villa on busy Adrianou Street, right below the Acropolis, boutique suites hotel that reads more like a glamorous private residence than anywhere you'd leave a key card on the nightstand. Marble bathrooms, walk-in rain showers, and organic bath products at every level, while the top suite adds a hot tub terrace staring straight up at the Parthenon. Staff is thin and services are minimal, but the neighborhood fills every gap.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel on pedestrianized Ermou, steps from the heart of Athens, where mid-century Modernism and a few gestures toward Art Deco landed somewhere that feels more like a very polished city apartment than a resort. Suites lean luxurious, and the top floor opens to views of the Acropolis and Lykavittos Hill. A Greek restaurant at street level means you can dress down before you've even decided where to go.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The street-level storefront is a bakery first and a boutique hotel second, which tells you everything about priorities here. Sourdough perfumes the stairwell, rooms come stocked with house-baked treats, and bakery room service runs nearly around the clock. Earth tones, natural light, and the occasional freestanding tub keep things comfortable upstairs, while a rooftop terrace and an all-day café give you somewhere to linger over local wine between ruins.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The oldest Ottoman house in Athens sits directly across the street, which gives Esse Athens its whole mood: a design-forward boutique hotel in Plaka that pairs herringbone floors and black marble with views that land squarely on the Acropolis. Suites have private verandas with open-air hot tubs, in case you need reminding where you are. Greek breakfast is served each morning, and the ancient monuments are a short walk through genuinely picturesque streets.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A 33-room boutique hotel in central Athens that leans hard into a hedonistic read of its namesake, with Art Deco touches softened into something more 21st-century playful than period-room precious. Rooms run from snug kings up to a suite with a terrace and Jacuzzi. The all-day restaurant and bar do a brisk trade, and the general atmosphere suggests guests here are not in Athens to go to bed early.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A neoclassical 19th-century building in Psyrri has been turned into a music-themed boutique hotel, which sounds like a concept that could go badly wrong. It doesn't. Rooms are named for figures from the Greek musical tradition, Maria Callas to Vangelis, each with its own color palette and graphic sensibility. A quiet courtyard appears where you don't expect one. No restaurant, but Psyrri has no shortage of options within walking distance.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A former 1950s textile factory, all raw concrete and utilitarian bones, turned boutique hotel in Psirri, one of Athens's faster-moving neighborhoods. The team behind Shila kept the roughness and leaned into it, letting the contrast make the soft furnishings feel softer. Freestanding tubs, custom rugs, everything purchasable if you fall for it. Breakfast is served; after that, the city. The rooftop bar has Acropolis views, and the basement runs as a speakeasy most nights.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The Campana brothers, Fernando and Humberto, were handed the bones of a mid-century Athens hotel and told to build a new one from the wreckage. Every door, beam, and slab of stone went back in, reassembled into something that reads less like salvage and more like a fever dream of collage. The rooms are comfortable enough that you forget you're sleeping inside an art project. A modern Mediterranean restaurant and a central Syntagma Square address round it out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Floor-to-ceiling windows in some rooms look directly out over Syntagma Square and toward the Acropolis, which is either a view or a constant reminder that you could be doing more sightseeing. This classic luxury hotel follows the standard Athens playbook: white marble, soundproofed rooms slightly larger than expected, and a wood-paneled lounge with green leather chairs built for a quiet nightcap. The location, steps from Kolonaki and the monuments, does a lot of the heavy lifting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A 1930s modernist landmark in the middle of Athens, the Perianth was restored by local firm K-Studio as a "neo-Modernist" tribute rather than a renovation, and the distinction shows. Rooms run to Bauhaus lines softened by faded gemstone hues, with custom furnishings throughout since no two rooms share a layout. The Parthenon is close enough to feel like a neighbor, and Greek breakfast is served downstairs in the hotel café.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Eighteen suites inside a period building just off Klafthmonos Square, close enough to walk everywhere that matters in central Athens. The rooms pair old architectural bones with spare, warm interiors, and several come with balconies, some with Jacuzzis or sun decks, and the corner suites improbably with three balconies each. An in-house restaurant and lounge round things out, which feels like more than the neighborhood strictly requires.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The ground floor sells fabric; upstairs is the hotel. A family-run boutique with five apartment-style rooms, each named for a different textile, velvet through cashmere, all sharing an Art Deco building from the old-Athens-that-still-exists part of the city center. Full kitchens, laundry, a rooftop terrace, and no restaurant on site, so breakfast means hitting the streets, which here are very good streets to hit.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A Seventies Modernist tower rising above the low-rise rooftops of Athens' Commercial Triangle, The Pinnacle is a 16-suite boutique hotel that gives you an angle on the Acropolis most visitors never get. Inside, a rotating collection of contemporary art keeps things from feeling like a time capsule. The Roof Garden is the real draw, whether you're down there for breakfast or staying for a sunset drink with the whole city spread out below.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A neoclassical building on Mitropoleos street, this boutique hotel was designed by Ernst Ziller, the architect whose fingerprints are all over 19th-century Athens, and the restoration takes that legacy seriously. Rooms are compact, with parquet floors, high ceilings, and marble rainfall showers. The real draw is the rooftop terrace, which sits close enough to the Acropolis that you feel slightly rude not looking up. The Plaka is steps away.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Canopy beds and marble fireplaces in a boutique hotel that's a short walk from the Acropolis, the Plaka, and the shopping chaos of Ermou Street, which is how it got its name. Rooms run Art Deco with monochrome tones and old-school moldings, the all-day bistro handles everything from coffee to cocktails, and there's a rooftop for when you want the skyline without the crowds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A wood-fired grill sits in full view of the counter seats, which means dinner comes with a front-row look at the chef doing actual work rather than a pass-through window. This small contemporary Greek spot in Pangrati bakes its own bread in ovens scattered around the room, so the smell gets you before the menu does. The daily-changing menu keeps things simple and seasonal, and the Michelin Guide has awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A boutique hotel on Dionysiou Areopagitou that skips the obligatory Parthenon-print-and-marble-column approach entirely, landing instead in a 1960s Athens that was modern and stylish and confident. Clean lines, wood-paneled rooms, pops of retro orange and blue, and private verandas throughout. The rooftop bar offers a view of ancient ruins and the sea at sunset, which is difficult to argue with.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A mid-century building by modernist architect Emmanuel Vourekas sets the tone: this Omonia Square boutique hotel leans hard into the hedonistic glamour of the Sixties and Seventies rather than ancient marble. K-Studio's interiors mix vintage touches with genuine comfort, most rooms come with record players, and the rooftop bar looks straight at the Parthenon, which is either ironic or perfect, depending on your mood.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Fire and smoke do the heavy lifting at this Mediterranean fusion spot near the Kerameikos archaeological site, where a Greek family's love of Spanish cooking shapes the menu. Set in an old house with a covered patio, it has the relaxed feel of a place run by people who actually want you there. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand. À la carte or a six-course tasting menu, both roads lead somewhere interesting.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Every room here is decorated in two or three carefully chosen, richly contrasting colors, which sounds like a design gimmick until you see how well it works against the Art Deco bones. This boutique hotel a few blocks from Omonia Square keeps things residential and low-key, breakfast included and not much else, which suits the neighborhood just fine. The bustling streets outside handle the entertainment portion of the stay.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Low-and-slow American barbecue in Athens, which is a sentence that takes a moment to process. Fine Mess Smokehouse is an informal spot where the chef, also behind a patisserie workshop called Lick the Spoon, applies serious technique to smoked meat. The Michelin Guide picked it up with a Bib Gourmand, and the menu runs from à la carte to a seasonal tasting menu with wine and old-fashioned cocktails alongside.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Safety orange, hot pink, and lime green: Fresh Hotel is a boutique hotel that has clearly never met a color it didn't like. Rooms are spare and modernist, Eames chairs and all, and the rooftop pool deck offers an unobstructed Acropolis view that turns into the Air Lounge cocktail bar after dark. The neighborhood is mid-gentrify at best, so arrange a car for evenings out. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

From the street in the hillside Mets neighborhood, this eleven-suite boutique hotel barely announces itself. Inside is a different proposition: an architectural firm's love letter to modernist design, with curated Greek art throughout and glass-walled suites that catch the light. Many rooms face the Acropolis, and the rooftop plunge pool does too, most dramatically after dark when the whole thing glows.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Named for the French type designer Firmin Didot, this six-room neoclassical townhouse in central Athens operates more as an aristocratic pied-à-terre than a hotel. Spiral staircases, gilt mirrors, and pastel shutters do the decorating, with houseplants filling whatever space remains. Rooms come with built-in bookshelves and city views, breakfast arrives in-room, and the staff know every good restaurant nearby. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The name means "new moon" in Greek, and the geometric, minimalist design earns it. This boutique hotel near the Acropolis keeps things sleek and calm, with floor-to-ceiling windows, parquet floors, and marble bathrooms across rooms that stay surprisingly quiet. The rooftop is the reason to book: a pool, a bar, and a restaurant, plus a view of the illuminated Acropolis after dark that makes transparent heated dining bubbles feel less absurd than they sound.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Stork, the rooftop bar, looks straight at the Acropolis, which is either a selling point or an argument for never leaving your sun lounger. This boutique hotel on Syngrou Avenue takes its name from the idea of a cozy tucked-away corner, and the rooms deliver on it: marble baths, Coco-Mat mattresses, and floor-to-ceiling windows dressed in whites and creams. Compact singles up to terrace suites mean it works for most party sizes.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Large windows flood this relaxed Athenian fusion restaurant with enough light to forgive the menu's ambition. The kitchen blends Greek ingredients with flavors from further afield, keeping the card short and focused rather than encyclopedic. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, it draws the kind of crowd that's happy to linger over a small, well-chosen meal without ceremony. Service matches the room: easy and attentive without hovering.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A working rooftop periscope is either the best hotel gimmick in Athens or a useful reminder that Kolonaki is worth surveying. This compact boutique hotel leans into a subtle nautical theme, with grey tones and vaguely naval furniture keeping things wry rather than kitschy. Rooms are minimalist but come loaded with home-theater systems, and suites add balconies and a little room to breathe. The small bar handles breakfast and light bites without any fuss.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Every dish here is cooked over wood or charcoal, no modern appliances allowed, which gives the whole menu a smoky, unhurried quality. This Michelin Bib Gourmand taverna in Athens reworks Greek culinary traditions, think dolmadakia and slow-cooked lamb with handmade pasta, in a room that pairs industrial design with an open kitchen and a balcony. Come evening, a DJ spins vinyl, so book ahead if you'd rather not explain yourself to the door.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A six-suite boutique hotel tucked into a Twenties neoclassical mansion in Kolonaki, Athens's well-heeled shopping and dining district. The style resists categories, mixing careful historic detail with bohemian-retro collage, and the common spaces, a garden courtyard, a rooftop terrace, and a library lounge hung with art and anchored by a piano, feel more like someone's very good house than a hotel. Small enough to rent entire for a wedding, which people do.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Halfway up Lycabettus Hill in Kolonaki, the St. George positions every room toward the Acropolis with the quiet confidence of a place that knows it has the best seat in the city. The 154 rooms run posh throughout, with hardwood floors and rich fabrics, while corner suites turn the view into the main event. The rooftop pool and restaurant make the case more plainly still.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A former type foundry in Psirri now does its best work as a boutique hotel, with suites that keep the industrial bones intact: terrazzo floors, steel-framed windows, exposed stone, and ceilings high enough to fit a loft level connected by a floating staircase. No two rooms are identical, but all run apartment-wide with full kitchens and marble bathrooms. The rooftop terrace serves gourmet pizzas and Greek wines under a view of the Acropolis that makes the whole thing feel slightly unfair.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A former Canadian embassy in the upscale Kolonaki neighborhood, now finished in minimalist black and gray, is a fitting shell for a boutique hotel that plants its flag firmly in mid-century Modernism rather than ancient ruins. The 38 rooms range from compact to top-floor suites with outdoor hot tubs and panoramic city views. Breakfast and drinks, but no restaurant; the point is that Athens is right outside.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Glamping on the Athenian Riviera sounds like a pitch, but the canvas tents here come with plunge pools, walk-in showers, and Marshall speakers, so the roughing-it part is mostly aesthetic. This is a design-forward beach resort from the Domes group, south of Athens on a coastline that's been quietly reinventing itself. Eight tennis courts, a beach club, a spa, and a Barbarossa outpost from Paros keep the days full.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Vouliagmeni sits just south of Athens on the Athenian Riviera, close enough to the city that you can pretend you planned the escape all along. The Margi is a boutique hotel with 88 rooms done in calm neutrals and handcrafted furniture, some with private balconies overlooking the coast. A bike path, a chic beach, a yacht marina, and a golf club are all within reach, and a Michelin-starred restaurant sits quietly on the premises for evenings you don't feel like wandering.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked into a narrow street in the historic centre, this sunny Mediterranean restaurant runs on seasonal Greek cooking from a chef whose menu shifts with the market and, apparently, his childhood memories. Soft tones, lots of natural light, and genuinely warm service give it the feel of somewhere a local would take you rather than somewhere you'd stumble into off a tourist map. There's a small bar for cocktails and a well-chosen list of Greek wines.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Two blocks from the Athenian Riviera and a quiet remove from its louder sister property, this 56-room design-oriented boutique hotel keeps things deliberately calm. Guests essentially share facilities, pools and spa included, with the larger Palace next door, which keeps the Suites feeling unhurried and a touch exclusive. Some rooms look out to sea, and a Greek-Mediterranean restaurant plus a seasonal beach bar handle the rest.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The open kitchen sits on the fifth floor of a converted mansion, with the Acropolis framed in the window like someone set it there on purpose. This hotel dining room blends Mediterranean and Asian cooking, plated with the kind of precision that makes you feel slightly underdressed. Evenings lean further into the tasting experience, and the wine list pulls from both established estates and smaller producers.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Marble tables, an open kitchen you can actually watch, and a wine list running past 800 labels set the tone at this Athens bistro, where the cooking blends French technique with Greek ingredients. Fish and seafood anchor the menu, with mature cuts for the meat-minded, and the raw red prawns from Koilada are the kind of thing regulars quietly plan their visit around. Art on the walls, serious food on the plate.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The Acropolis sits dead ahead from the eighth-floor terrace of this Mediterranean restaurant atop the Hotel Grande Bretagne, which means half the table will be ignoring you. The menu leans Italian in spirit, with pasta and risotto given their own corner of the card, and the kitchen keeps things seasonal without turning the whole thing into a lecture about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass-walled pool that could double as a piece of the art collection sets the tone at this boutique hotel in Ekali, the leafy northern suburb that gives you Athens access without the noise. The 29 rooms lean minimalist without feeling cold, thanks to organic materials and a serious eye for contemporary art throughout. Close enough to the city, removed enough to feel like an escape.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A corner restaurant steps from the Acropolis Museum that earns its sightseeing-crowd location by actually deserving it. The kitchen turns out contemporary Mediterranean cooking with a quiet lean toward Asia, so expect clean, precisely balanced plates and the occasional textural surprise. There's a lounge, a terrace for warmer evenings, and a private room upstairs when someone needs to organize a group dinner nobody else volunteered to plan.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A tasting-menu restaurant tucked into a residential neighborhood, see|ds takes its name from the chef's initials woven into the word itself, which tells you something about how personal the project is. The kitchen runs French-inflected modern cooking built on local seasonal produce, offered in two menus that differ only by length. Upstairs, a loft seats ten beside the wine cellar for a dinner that feels closer to someone's home than a restaurant.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Karim Rashid designed this boutique hotel in Athens's leafy northern suburb of Kifissia, and his signature day-glo palette makes most luxury hotels look like they gave up. The pool, the spa, and a rotating art collection give guests plenty of reasons to stay put, which is convenient given that Kifissia itself is a quiet, upscale suburb rather than the city center. Bring an appetite for furniture that makes you second-guess your eyes.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The seventh floor puts the Acropolis at eye level, which is either a coincidence or the entire point of dining here. SENSE is a tasting-menu restaurant on top of the AthensWas Hotel, running two menus plus a vegetarian option built around Greek Mediterranean cooking with an international lean. Herbs from the rooftop garden make their way into the dishes, so the kitchen is, in a literal sense, eating its own homework.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wood-fired everything is the organizing principle at Vezené, a bistro near the Evangelismos metro with an elegant glass porch and a kitchen that treats open flame as a philosophy rather than a technique. The menu moves through local seafood, aged meats, and pasta, with most of it passing through fire at some point. On weekends the kitchen puts out a generously portioned Sunday roast, family-style.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

A plant-based cafe in central Athens that roasts its own single-origin coffee and keeps the pace at a low-grade sprint most of the morning. The weekly rotating dessert specials and lighter menu draw a crowd that moves through fast, so if you have questions for the barista, wait for a lull. The coffee program leans curious, the kind of place where leaving the choice to whoever is behind the bar tends to end in a pleasant surprise.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

An Ozzy Osbourne vinyl on the wall sets the tone for this small roaster-cafe, where the 2024 Greek roasting champion roasts in-house on a rare Silon ZR7. The dark interior is covered in collages, the opposite of a commercial chain in every sense. Expect light-to-medium roasts that hold onto their natural sweetness, brewed with the kind of nerdy precision that has regulars discussing pour ratios over the counter.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

A La Marzocco sits center stage in the white-brick room, with a V60 station up front and in-house baking filling the rest of the counter. This is a serious neighborhood espresso bar tucked up a quiet hill near the National Garden, where the filter menu rotates through changing roasters and the co-owner has a Hellenic Brewers Cup win on the shelf. Sprudge included it in their Athens coffee guide, which in coffee circles carries weight.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

Ibrik coffee prepared in a bed of hot sand is the reason to stop at this old-school Athenian coffee shop near the Varvakios Central Market. They roast their own beans and pull espresso for anyone who prefers their coffee pre-wave, but the hovoli method, finely ground coffee heated in a small copper pot, is the thing. The room runs high-ceilinged and retro, with sidewalk tables pressed against the windows where the full noise of central Athens provides the ambiance.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

The space used to be a cobbler shop, and the name stuck when the coffee took over. This graffiti-covered corner café in downtown Athens has an outdoor bench culture and a soundtrack loud enough to feel like a party, while inside the blenders and espresso machines run at full tilt. Beans come from a local Kallithea roaster known for milk-friendly blends, and the baked goods sell out fast enough that showing up early is not optional.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

The pour-over counter in the corner is set up like an omakase nook, where you can quiz the barista about origins and roast profiles while your coffee brews. This specialty coffee shop in Koukaki sits under a wide arcade, bright and minimalist, with plenty of tables for a long sit. The pizzas are there if you get hungry, and the tiramisu is a reasonable excuse to stay another round. Cups go out stamped "Have an OMSOM day," which is either charming or a lot, depending on your mood.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

Half the specialty coffee shops in Athens trace their lineage back to this place. Taf is an old-school institution in the Exarchia neighborhood, the kind of coffee shop where the baristas judge sensory championships on weekends and direct-trade single-origins are poured with deliberate ceremony. Bags of beans and filter gear line the shelves if you want to take the obsession home. Serious without being unfriendly, and a short walk from legendary loukoumades.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

A multi-floor specialty coffee shop two minutes from Thiseo metro, close enough to the Acropolis that tourists occasionally stumble in looking for the path. Pull up a stool at the dedicated brew bar and the staff will happily get into water mineral content and extraction ratios without you having to ask twice. The team behind it has serious competition credentials, and the rotating pour-over menu leans toward naturals and washed African lots.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Athens, Greece

Tables spill out onto the pedestrian street of Athens' old textile quarter, and the double-height windowed walls keep things airy enough that you forget it's technically a bar. Senios runs from morning coffee through late-night cocktails without making a big deal of it, which is kind of the point: the team behind The Clumsies wanted to revive the idea of the neighborhood café-bar where nobody's in a rush to turn the table.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

An open fire grill anchors the kitchen at this Kolonaki steakhouse, where the beef, sourced from Spain, Australia, and the States, gets wet- or dry-aged before meeting the flame. The room carries the easy confidence of a great European brasserie, filtered through something distinctly Athenian, glasses stay full and conversation doesn't need encouragement. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, the only entry from Southeast Europe.

1. World's 101 Best #72 · World's Best Steak Restaurants

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide