All about the world's ancient capital city.
When you saddle a trip with a moniker as lofty as “Best of Greece,” you’d better make sure it lives up to the hype. This one does. Compiling the top moments from our best-selling trips in the region, this comprehensive tour through the cradle of Western Civilization brings the distant past and vibrant present into…
A can’t-miss on two counts: it’s a marvellous temple, the largest in Greece, and it’s smack in the centre of Athens. The temple is impressive for the sheer size of its 104 Corinthian columns (17m high with a base diameter of 1.7m), of which 15 remain – the fallen column was blown down in a…
The Acropolis is the most important ancient site in the Western world. Crowned by the Parthenon, it stands sentinel over Athens, visible from almost everywhere within the city. Its monuments and sanctuaries of white Pentelic marble gleam in the midday sun and gradually take on a honey hue as the sun sinks, while at night…
Brimming with grand sights, celebrated cuisine and legendary nightlife, you feel spoiled for choice with one day in Athens. The secret is in not trying to do everything. Spoiled for choice. That’s likely how you’ll feel with a mere day in Athens. Brimming with grand sights, celebrated cuisine and legendary nightlife, it can be challenging…
Locals define the Greek concept of ‘philoxenia’, which directly translates as ‘love of strangers’, as a warmth that makes foreigners feel immediately welcomed. Few cities in the world rival the antiquity of Athens, where people have lived continuously for thousands of years. Athenians created the first forms of democracy, the plays and philosophy that shaped…
Theocritus was born about 310 B. C. in Sicily and died later than 270; he lived and worked in Sicily, in the island of Cos, and in Alexandria. Nearly all his poems are in hexameter verse; they are mostly named eidyllia (our ‘idylls’), which probably means ‘little pictures’. The favourite subject is the life of…
Demosthenes was born at Athens in 384 B.C. His father, a rich manufacturer, died when Demosthenes was seven years old. The boy’s guardians embezzled much of the estate, and at the age of twenty-one he went to law with them, succeeding after much litigation but regaining little of his property. He began to address the…