Athens in 3 Days: The Itinerary, With What Everything Actually Costs

Nearest station: Akropoli (line 2)

Go up the Propylaea, take the Parthenon slowly, and give the Erechtheion its due rather than photographing the Caryatid porch and moving on. Entry is timed, and the earliest slot is the one worth having. The site opens 08:00 all year; it closes at 17:00 in winter with last entry 16:30, and at 20:00 in summer with last entry 19:30, tapering through September and October.

The catch: The lift is out of service. Hellenic Heritage, which operates the site, published a temporary suspension notice on 25 July 2026 and had not restored it as of 4 August. It had been back in service since 13 March. If step-free access decides your visit, phone the Chief Guards Office on +30 213 1317762 before you go rather than trusting any page, including this one.

Walk down through the Theatre of Dionysus, where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were first staged, and past the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, which still hosts summer performances. This is included in the Acropolis ticket and it is the part people miss because they leave by the way they came in. Come down to the south exit on Dionysiou Areopagitou.

The catch: The toilets inside the archaeological site are under renovation and closed. There are toilets to the right of the central entrance and chemical ones to the left, and you want to use them before you go up rather than after.

Nearest station: Akropoli (line 2)

A measured 864 metres and about twelve minutes downhill from the Acropolis entrance. Go after the rock, not before: the top-floor Parthenon Gallery is laid out to the same orientation and dimensions as the temple you have just walked around, with the frieze at eye level, and it only lands if the building is fresh in your mind. The glass floors over the excavated neighbourhood below are worth slowing down for.

The catch: It is a separate ticket and always has been, even when the state combined ticket existed. Reduced and free tickets are issued only at the ground-floor desk with documentation, never online.

Free, and the best hour of the first day. A cluster of whitewashed Cycladic houses built into the north slope of the Acropolis by builders from Anafi who came to work on King Otto's palace in the 1840s. The lanes are barely a metre wide and end abruptly at the rock. It takes forty minutes and it is the one part of central Athens that feels like an island.

The catch: People live there. It is not a monument, and the lanes are somebody's front step.

Nearest station: Thiseio (line 1)

Enter from Thiseio Square. The Temple of Hephaestus sits on the low hill on the west side, complete enough to show you what the Parthenon looked like before the roof went. The Stoa of Attalos, rebuilt in the 1950s, runs down the east side. Winter hours are 08:00 to 16:30 with last entry 16:10; summer 08:00 to 19:30 with last entry 19:00, so it shuts earlier than the Acropolis in both seasons.

The catch: Since 1 November 2025 the exhibition on the floor of the Stoa of Attalos and the Church of the Holy Apostles have both been closed. The Stoa museum is the main reason people pay 20 euro here, so at the moment the ticket buys you rather less than it used to.

Nearest station: Monastiraki (lines 1 and 3)

Four minutes from Monastiraki station on a measured route, 297 metres. The Tower of the Winds is a first-century BC octagonal timepiece with a sundial on each face, a water clock inside and a carved wind god on every side, and it is the most complete building of its kind left anywhere. Small site, half an hour, worth the ten euro.

The catch: The Fethiye Mosque inside the site has been open only on Wednesdays and Sundays, 08:00 to 15:00, since 1 November 2025. If you want to see inside it, that is the constraint the rest of your day has to bend around.

Nearest station: Monastiraki (lines 1 and 3)

A measured 250 metres and three minutes from the Roman Agora, right at Monastiraki station. Hadrian built it in 132 AD as a library, reading rooms and courtyard around a pool, and the surviving west wall with its Corinthian columns is the piece everyone photographs from the square without realising they can go in.

The catch: It is a twenty-minute site. If the budget is tight this is the one of the three to drop, not the Roman Agora.

Free. The square is the junction of everything: metro lines 1 and 3, the Tzistarakis Mosque, the arcade, and Ifestou running west into the flea market. Sunday is the real market day. Eat here, at street level, rather than in Plaka where the same plate costs half as much again.

The catch: It is the most pickpocketed square in Athens for the obvious reason that it is the busiest. Bag in front on the escalators.

Free, and a measured eleven minutes from the Acropolis entrance if you want to combine it with the rock instead. Kydathinaion and Adrianou are the two spines. It is touristy and it is also genuinely beautiful, and the trick is to walk one street back from wherever the menus are in four languages.

The catch: Restaurant touts on Adrianou. Anywhere with someone outside asking you in is not the place you want.

Nearest station: Akropoli (line 2) or Syntagma

A measured twelve minutes from Syntagma, 907 metres. Fifteen columns of an original 104, each seventeen metres tall, on a temple that took about 638 years to finish and was completed by Hadrian. It is one monument in a field and you will not need an hour, but standing under the columns is the only way to grasp the scale.

The catch: Twenty euro for a single monument is the biggest price surprise in Athens. Worse, an announcement dated 1 April 2026 closes the area around Hadrian's Arch for the Vasilissis Olgas Avenue redevelopment, and the arch is the free photo stop everyone pairs with this.

Nearest station: Syntagma (lines 2 and 3)

Free, and a measured six minutes from Syntagma, 458 metres. Queen Amalia's palace garden, opened to the public and now the only large piece of deep shade in central Athens, which in July is not a small thing. Cut through it between the Olympieion and the Stadium rather than walking the avenues, and come out by the Zappeion.

The catch: It closes at sunset and the paths are unlit, so it is a daytime shortcut rather than an evening one.

Nearest station: Akropoli or Evangelismos

A measured twelve minutes from the Olympieion, 884 metres. The only stadium in the world built entirely of marble, rebuilt on the ancient foundations for the first modern Olympics in 1896. The ticket includes an audio guide in eleven languages, about thirty minutes, and it takes you onto the track and into the vaulted athletes' passage.

The catch: It runs separately from the Ministry's archaeological network, so no state free day or state concession applies here. Open 08:00 to 19:00 March to October, 08:00 to 17:00 November to February, and the ticket is valid only on the day of issue.

Nearest station: Victoria (line 1) or Omonia

A measured twenty-five minutes on foot from Syntagma, 1,878 metres, or two stops on the metro. The Mask of Agamemnon, the Antikythera Mechanism, the bronze of Zeus or Poseidon from Artemision, the Santorini frescoes. If you only do one museum in Greece it is this one, and three hours is not too long.

The catch: Tuesday opening is 13:00 to 20:00, every week of the year. Wednesday to Monday it is 08:30 to 15:30 in winter and 08:00 to 20:00 in summer, and its winter season runs 16 November to 3 May, which is not the same as the archaeological sites' 1 November to 31 March. Galleries start clearing twenty minutes before closing.

Nearest station: Evangelismos (line 3)

The highest point in central Athens, with the Acropolis below you and the sea beyond it, and the best place to end three days. The funicular runs in a tunnel from the top of Plutarch Street in Kolonaki, a measured fifteen minutes from Syntagma. You can also walk up through the pines in about half an hour.

The catch: We could not confirm the funicular fare from an operator source. Published figures range from about 7 to 10 euro one way and 10 to 13 euro return, and no operator site was reachable, so take cash and check the board rather than trusting a number.