THE CRADLE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

You think that once you’ve seen the Acropolis and the treasures in the Archaeological Museum, you can forget Athens and speed off to an island. But you’d be missing the chance to know a wonderful, quirky city that is in the process of reinventing itself. Perhaps what I love most about it is the unexpected mingling of ancient, Byzantine, neoclassical, ultramodern and funky.

Below touristy Monastiraki, for example, you can stroll through the ancient Kerameikos cemetery and meet up with tortoises and tadpoles among the touching grave monuments. Across the street are the old Gas Works, now an elegant if empty cultural center, the new Benaki Museum of Modern Art, a smattering of fabulous restaurants, and the trolley depot, disguised by brilliant graffiti.

Next door in the other direction are a synagogue, a museum of traditional pottery, a collection of Islamic art and the trendy district of Psyrri. Formerly a red-light district by night and small factories by day, it has become the Athenians’ favorite playground – a lively place of galleries, tavernas, multiethnic restaurants, and experimental theaters. And all this within an area of about one square mile.

As for Attica, it has a similarly eclectic abundance of things to see. Besides the famous temple at Sounion, there are the ancient silver mines at Lavrion, a host of tiny post-Byzantine chapels, delightful but little known museums at Marathon, Elefsina (Eleusis) and Vravrona, a mini version of Epidaurus at Amphiaraion, seaside tavernas galore and inland eateries featuring spit-roasted lamb, vineyards to visit and the world’s third largest collection of exotic birds, among other things. And if you want an island, Aigina is not even an hour’s ferry ride away.

Itinerary 2:

BYZANTINE ATHENS

After you’ve “done” the Acropolis and the Archaeological Museum on your own, I’ll take you on a stroll through Athens that you won’t find in any guidebook. When Athens became the capital of the new Greek state in 1834, it was just a small village huddled under the rock of the Acropolis.

Churches and mosques were liberally sprinkled in its midst but those in charge of planning the new city ruthlessly demolished them to lay bare the antiquities in hopes of rediscovering the glory of the past. Although they tore down more than 70 churches from the Byzantine period (3rd-15th century), some twelve survived. To find them, we will take a circuitous route through Plaka, the oldest part of Athens and one of the loveliest. They pop up in surprising places: at the entrance to a modern office building, in the center of the busiest shopping street, next to Classical relics, in a square surrounded by cypress trees, in the shadow of the modern Cathedral . . . and so forth. They are all different and they all have a story; some rest on ancient foundations, others incorporate reliefs from earlier churches or possess interesting icons or frescoes.

On our walk we’ll pass restored 19th century houses, curiosity shops, museums you may want to dip into or visit later, abandoned buildings, vestiges of the Roman and Ottoman occupations, and amazing graffiti.

Of course, whenever we feel like a pause, there’ll be a café or taverna where we can rest our feet and brains. It’s one of my favorite neighborhoods but even I cannot predict everything we’ll find, since new things keep happening here. For example, I still haven’t been to the Turkish baths building that has just been restored near the Tower of the Winds.

FOOD LOVER'S TOUR OF ATHENS

Another of my very favorite haunts is the area around the Athens Central Market, between Omonia Square and Monastiraki. Housed in a late 19th century building with a handsome metal roof, the market is no place for the faint-hearted. First of all, the din is deafening. At its core, fishmongers try to out shout each other as they compete for the attention of suspicious shoppers well versed in the art of getting the best for less. Piled on crushed ice atop marble slabs lie just about every creature the sea has to offer, from tiny whitebait to gruesome monkfish, octopus and squid in varieties you’ve probably not seen before, plus shellfish, live crabs and a few spiny lobsters.

The meat stalls, which flank the fish market, are even more daunting. Sheep, steer and pig carcasses dangle from hooks, heads and entrails drip onto the sawdust-covered floor, while strong-armed butchers hack cuts that may be unfamiliar to most foreigners.

If all this brings you closer than you’d like to a Francis Bacon painting, then we’ll concentrate on the shops that ring the market. Here you’ll find cheese emporia, olive and pickle merchants, deli-type stalls specializing in all kinds of sausages and cold cuts.

The streets themselves are crowded with vendors, gypsies selling long braids of garlic, old women in black peddling bunches of herbs or fresh eggs, lottery salesmen, and fast-talkers demonstrating a new kitchen gadget. This is Athens as theater.

Across Athinas Street is the vegetable market, where there are also a few shops that stock delicacies like Polish sour cream or Russian crabmeat. This is a corner of Athens where the recent ethnic changes are most visible. Indian and Pakistani restaurants stand alongside Chinese grocers.

One shop sells only cured meats from Turkey, others sell flower bulbs and seeds. Best of all are the spice and herb shops on Evripidou Street. Here you can serve yourself herbs and dried foods from open containers or ask the employees to help you find any spice you want from the crammed shelves of closed jars behind the counter.

If we’re hungry, we can stop at Krinos for fresh fried loukoumades (doughnuts) dripping with honey, or have lunch at one of the tavernas in the market. If we go on Saturday, we might find the owner playing the clarinet and the customers singing and dancing.

Further down Athinas, heading towards Monastiraki, with the Acropolis in the distance, we pass several old-fashioned hardware stores and can look into a few new shops that bring traditional products from islands like Samos, Mytilini, Limnos and Naxos. Their sweets, cheeses, olive oil soaps and liqueurs are not easy to find elsewhere. Maybe they’ll let us taste them. If your sweet tooth clamors for more, we can pick up some hand-made chocolates or hard candy at two shops closer to Syntagma Square before we think of a rest before supper.

Itinerary 3:

A DAY EXPLORING ATTICA

This day starts with a visit to the Byzantine monastery of Kaisariani on the slopes of Mt. Hymettus overlooking Athens. This 11th century complex is not just an architectural gem with wonderful frescoes; it also has a lovely garden and a nursery containing only indigenous Greek plants. If you’re interested, we can also get permission to visit the Botanical Garden being created on the hillside above it. It contains plants from the Peloponnese for the most part.

From there we’ll drive to the east side of Hymettus, where you can choose between a walk inside it – in a spectacular cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites – or a visit to a most unusual museum. The Vorres Museum in Paiania is a three-in-one bargain. You get to see an eccentric millionaire’s collection of Greek contemporary art and sculpture that will introduce you to all its biggest names, a garden that supposedly has 3,500 trees and shrubs, plus an amazing house that is a treasure trove of Greek folk art and culture. Outdoors there are tables made of olive millstones, marble wellheads and medieval plaques, all used in innovative ways. Indoors, most of the furniture and objects have been rescued from an old monastery, mansion or farm. They’ll give you amazing insights into a Greece you may not have known existed.

After that, we can either visit another special garden – the headquarters of the Mediterranean Garden Society – or go to the zoo. The Attica Zoo, founded by a Frenchman, is no ordinary place. It boasts the world’s third largest collection of birds, flying about in large aviaries, as well as a growing population of animals that are confined with equal sensitivity in a beautifully landscaped park not far from the airport.

But if you’ve had enough of fauna and flora, we can search for traces of the ancient silver mines around Lavrion, drop in on a winery or two (Attica is Greece’s largest wine-producing region), or go to the ancient site of Vravrona, which was supposedly where Artemis whisked Iphigenia when her father Agamemnon tried to sacrifice her before setting sail for Troy. It became a sanctuary for orphans and so the museum contains all sorts of toys and statues of children, quite different from more customary exhibits of gold and weaponry.

Needless to say, we can stop at a fish taverna or gobble some lamb chops whenever hunger strikes.