Athens

Athens has been inhabited for more than three thousand years. In the fifth century BC, after victories over the Persians, the city reached its golden age under Pericles: the Parthenon was built, Athenian citizens experimented with democracy, and Socrates, Sophocles and later Plato and Aristotle shaped Western thought. Rome absorbed Greece, and Athens remained a respected centre of learning before declining in the Byzantine era. Under Ottoman rule from 1458 it was a small provincial town; in 1687 a Venetian shell ignited gunpowder stored in the Parthenon and blew off its roof. When modern Greece won independence, Athens was chosen as capital in 1834 and rebuilt with neoclassical avenues. It hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and again in 2004.

Athenians eat late, talk loudly and linger long. Dinner rarely starts before nine, and a meal means many shared plates: grilled octopus, horiatiki salad, souvlaki, spanakopita and meze with ouzo or tsipouro. Coffee is a social institution; the iced freddo espresso is the summer standard. On summer nights, open-air cinemas screen films beneath the Acropolis. Greek Orthodox Easter is the year's biggest celebration, with candlelit processions and lamb roasting on spits.