There’s something about Athens that is simply timeless. The famous Classical period ended over 2,300 years ago, yet when we think of Athens, we still imagine Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato teaching philosophy; the invention of democracy; and massive advancements in medicine, science, and the arts. These things shaped the very foundation of our modern western society, and they all happened in Greece.
No visit to Athens is complete without delving into the city’s rich history amongst ancient ruins and museums. The easiest way to explore Athens’ past is with a Turbopass All Inclusive Athens City Pass. The pass includes fast-track entry to Athens’ most popular museums and historic sites so you don’t have to worry about deciding where to go or queueing up in the excruciatingly-long ticket lines. Simply have your digital pass ready to be scanned on your smartphone and prepare to marvel at what remains of ancient Athens.
With this first-hand, expertly crafted itinerary for Greece, your 4 days in Athens will cover the most significant historic sites and get maximum value out of your Athens City Pass. I’m sure Plato would agree.
Day 1
2pm - Check into your hotel
Check into your hotel or Airbnb apartment and settle in. I stayed at New Hotel, a stylish boutique hotel centrally located in Plaka which has buffet breakfasts to die for and a rooftop bar with incredible city views.
4pm - Read up on your Athens City Pass and Collect your Acropolis Extended Area tickets
Before leaving for Athens, book your Athens City Pass online and have it emailed straight to your inbox. If you choose to add public transport, that ticket will be sent to your home address, so make sure you leave plenty time for it to arrive in the post.
The Athens City Pass comes in 2 levels:
- Athens City Pass Mini (€29.90 - €176.90) - includes fast track entry to the New Acropolis Museum; a 2-day hop-on-hop-off bus ticket; free guided walking tours in summer months; an optional 1-day cruise to Hydra, Poros & Aegina; optional public transport for 72 or 144 hours; and shopping, museum, and tour discounts.
- All Inclusive Athens City Pass (€49.90 - €223.90) - available as a 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 day pass including everything in the Athens City Pass Mini plus the Acropolis, Parthenon and Slopes site; the Ancient Agora and Stoa of Attalos; the Roman Agora; Hadrian’s Library; Aristotle’s Lyceum; the Temple of Olympian Zeus; Kerameikos Archaeological Site and Museum; the Herakleidon Art & Technology Museum; the Ilias Lalaounis Jewellery Museum; and the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology.
All city passes can be printed or simply shown on your smartphone.
This itinerary works best with the 4-day All Inclusive Athens City Pass with 72-hours public transport (€95.90) for maximum museum access. By the time you add up the entry fees (usually between €4 and €20 pp) and transport to and between the sites, the City Pass saves a fair few pennies and, let’s be honest, “museum hopping” is much more enjoyable when you can skip the ticket queues.
I suggest spending some time reading through the Athens City Pass document (sent to you as a PDF) to make sure you know how to use it at each attraction. You'll also need to collect your physical Acropolis Extended Area ticket fromHop In Sightseeing (open daily between 6:30am-10pm), a 5-minute walk from New Hotel. This ticket will get you in to sites including the Acropolis and Parthenon Slopes, the Ancient Agora, and the Temple of Olympic Zeus.
To stay online while you're in Athens, I recommend travelling with a TEP Wireless 4G hotspot.
5pm or 6:30pm - Take a Sunset Tour
Athens is a city that comes to life after dark. I found the best way to get a feel for the vibrant urban culture is by taking a guided sunset tour. Choose either Athens By Bike’s Sunset Tour if you enjoy cycling or Greeking.Me’s Athens Highlights Evening Walking Tour with Meze Dinner if you prefer walking.
5pm - Athens By Bike Sunset Tour (OPTION #1)
This 3-hour tour meanders for 9km around central Athens making several stops for photos, stories, and background info. The tour starts at Athens By Bike’s office to get measured up for a bike, grab a helmet, and drop off any bulky bags before zipping off to explore the city.
You don’t have to be an expert cyclist to enjoy this tour. Our guide, Demetrios, kept to the pace of the slowest cyclist and stuck to pedestrian paths so we didn’t have to dodge traffic (except a couple cross-walks).
We cycled through the National Gardens to the Presidential Palace, where we arrived just in time to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony (which I think inspired Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks).
My favourite thing about this tour was how perfectly the stops were timed. We arrived at Filopappou Hill just in time to watch the sunset and cycled passed the Parthenon shortly after the lights turned on, sending a soft warm glow over the Acropolis slopes.
Other sites we visited include the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Panathenaic Stadium, the Ancient Agora, and the Metropolitan Church of Athens, all of which we stopped at to take photos and listen to stories shared by Demetrios.
The tour finished with a short ride through Plaka back to the starting point. Demetrios suggested a few restaurants along the way, so after dropping off the bikes, we headed back to one of his recommendations for dinner.
6:30pm - Athens Highlights Evening Walking Tour (OPTION #2)
This 3-hour walking tour led by an expert archaeologist aims to share historical stories behind Athens’ many ancient ruins and showcase the city after dark.
Our guide, Penelope, kicked off our tour with a crash course in ancient Greek history, explaining human life in Athens dates back to 6,000 BC. Various civilisations like the Classical Greeks and Romans left their mark on land since buried, forming 5 distinct layers underneath the city. We stopped by the Syntagma Metro Station to see a fascinating cross section of these 5 substrata layers.
After our short history lesson, we visited the Greek Parliament building just in time to watch the Changing of the Guard Ceremony. We continued on to visit sites including the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Lysicrates Monument, the Tower of Winds, and Hadrian’s Library.
Penelope was full of captivating historical stories, like how a Byzantine monk predicted the fall of the 16th pillar at the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which fell during a storm in 1852.
This tour isn’t all history though, we also explored trendy neighbourhoods Plaka and Psyri and the lively Monastiraki Square before dinner.
To finish off the tour, our group shared an authentic Greek meal at Bandiera, where Penelope made sure we sampled the best of Greek cuisine like taramasalata, dolmades, pastries, and baklava with mastic ice-cream.
Day 2
The focus of Day 2 is to explore the Acropolis area with the Athens Open Tours hop-on-hop-off bus ticket included in your Athens City Pass.
Note: Bus timetables differ between winter and summer months. The times in this itinerary follow the summer timetable. Current timetables and live bus tracking are available online through Athens Open Tours.
8:45am – Catch the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus to the New Acropolis Museum
To use the hop-on hop-off bus for the first time, you’ll need to get your Athens City Pass scanned by an Athens Open Tours staff member on the bus, so try to arrive 15-minutes early. Once your pass has been scanned, you’ll be handed headphones and a bus ticket to use over the next 2 days, so be sure to keep them somewhere safe.
I caught the 8:45am bus from Syntagma Square and got off at the New Acropolis Museum. On the way, I plugged in my headphones under my seat and heard stories about the roads we travelled on and buildings and sites we passed.
To enter the New Acropolis Museum, you’ll need to get your Athens City Pass scanned at the Group Ticket Counter and be handed a paper ticket. After dropping any bulky backpacks at the cloakroom, it’s time to learn the history behind the Acropolis and Parthenon.
The museum is brimming with valuable information like statues, reconstructed renderings, and timelines of the destruction and restoration of the Parthenon. I don’t think I would have appreciated my visit to the Acropolis site as much as I did without visiting the museum first. You’ll be amazed to learn how significant the site has been over the last 2,000 years.
10:30am – Visit the Acropolis and Parthenon
From the museum, walk about 3 minutes north to the Acropolis & Parthenon Slopes entrance and present your Acropolis Extended Area ticket at the entry gate. Make sure you get your ticket back to use at future sites and be on your way to climb the Acropolis slopes to the ancient Parthenon.
Just before entering the site, we were approached by a guide wanting to sell us a tour of the Acropolis slopes, convinced we couldn’t possibly understand the significance of ruins like the Theatre of Dionysus and Odeon of Herodes Atticus by ourselves. I turned her down and guess what... the sites were still mind-blowingly-amazing even without her guided tour. If you really want to know the history of the ruins on the Acropolis slopes, I suggest looking them up on Wikipedia before your visit. Otherwise, the museum (we just went to) is more than enough.
Once we’d seen the Parthenon from every possible angle, we took the exit near the Temple of Athena Nike and stopped at Areopagus Hill for a few more Acropolis photos.
12pm – Explore Filopappou Hill
Not far from the Acropolis & Parthenon bus stop is a pedestrian path that leads to Filopappou Hill, one of my favourite lookout points in Athens. If you visited Filopappou Hill on the sunset cycling tour, you may want to skip the hill itself but it’s still worth exploring nearby sites like the Church of Agios Demetrios Loumardiaris, the Prison of Socrates and the Monument of Philopappos.
1pm – Catch the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus to the Temple of Olympian Zeus
Take the 1.08pm Athens Open Tours bus from the Acropolis & Parthenon bus stop and get off at the next stop, the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
I recommend first walking over to Hadrian’s Arch, located just outside the temple’s northwest fence to see the 2,000-year-old marble gateway, dedicated to Roman emperor Hadrian, up close.
1:15pm – Lunch
By now, you’ll have probably worked up an appetite so grab some lunch before continuing to explore the acropolis area. We went to Palea Athina for delicious homestyle Greek cuisine (7-minute walk north) which is open 12pm-10pm, Monday-Saturday.
2:15pm – Temple of Olympian Zeus
Walk back to the Temple of Olympian Zeus entry gate (at the northeast corner of the complex) and present your Acropolis Extended Area ticket to walk among ruins of the once colossal Temple of Olympian Zeus.
I recommend reading the temple’s fascinating history on the plaques within the site. The stories told by your sunset tour guide should also add some context and boost your understanding of the ruins in front of you.
3:15pm – Catch the Hop-on Hop-off Bus to the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology
Catch the 3.15pm Athens Open Tours bus from the Temple of Olympian Zeus to the Benaki Museum, then walk 5 minutes to the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology. This time, simply scan your Athens City Pass at the ticket counter.
Unlike most Athenian museums, the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology doesn’t showcase marble statues discovered in archaeological excavations, but recreated inventions from the ancient Greek world. It sheds otherwise impossible insight into the brilliant minds of the ancient Greeks and the lavish lifestyles they enjoyed. All exhibits were constructed from scratch by Kostas Kotsanas using his research into ancient Greek contributions to technology and science and from 2,000 BC to the end of ancient Greek era.
Some of my favourite exhibits include a robot that mixes water with wine, an automatic alarm clock, a catapult, a mini cinema, encryption devices, long-distance communication tools, automatically opening doors, musical instruments, and strategy games.
5:30pm – Catch the Hop-on Hop-off Bus Back to your Hotel
Walk back to the Benaki Museum and catch the 5.22pm Athens Open Tours bus to Syntagma Square, or whichever stop is closest to your hotel. This should complete the Athens line loop, so you’ll have seen the bulk of the city centre from the hop-on-hop-off bus.
Unwind in your hotel and rest your feet for an hour or two before heading out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. I can recommend 3 eateries in the area: Athena’s Cook & Ella Greek Cooking and the wine bar Oinoscent. If you can save room for gelato afterwards, try Le Greche.
Greece tip: Easily book a discount ferry from Athens to Mykonos. Find out how.
Day 3
Day 3 provides a break from history, using the second day of your hop-on-hop-off bus ticket to explore Piraeus and the Athenian Riviera. You can always miss Piraeus to spend more time exploring the Riviera and beaches, or vice-versa, if you prefer.
10am – Catch the Hop-on Hop-off Bus to Piraeus
Refreshed from a glorious sleep-in, catch the 10am bus from Syntagma Square (or the bus stop closest to your hotel) to the Acropolis & Parthenon interchange where you can swap lines and catch the 10:45am bus to Piraeus. Don’t forget to bring your bus tickets and headphones from the day before.
We got off at Pasalimani and walked along the peaceful marina to get a feel for Piraeus.
11:30am – Stop for an Early Lunch
We stopped at Route Souvlaki 24 for a delicious souvlaki opposite the waterfront. 2 souvlakis and 2 bottles of water cost €5.20. Bargain!
12:00pm – Visit the Archaeology Museum of Piraeus
The Archaeology Museum of Piraeus is a 5-minute walk from the souvlaki shop and costs €2 per person in entry fees. The museum mainly contains marble and bronze sculptures purchased by ancient civilisations, like the Romans, that never made it to their final destination – they were discovered in shipwrecks off the coast of Piraeus. The museum also features funerary monuments, pieces of ancient war ships, and stone tablets declaring administrative laws.
Unlike most museums in Athens, this museum doesn’t showcase original and expensive sculptures of the rich and famous, but copies purchased by the less-wealthy or foreigners. It displays tablets detailing meat and fish prices and tax exemptions applicable to the common Athenian. I found it fascinating to see such indicators the lifestyles afforded by ancient Greeks.
1:30pm – the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus to the Acropolis & Parthenon Interchange
Catch the 1:38pm bus from Pasalimani back to the Acropolis & Parthenon interchange and change over to the Riviera and Beaches line.
2:20pm – Catch the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus to see the Athenian Riviera
Catch the 2:20pm bus from Acropolis & Parthenon interchange. Plug in your headphones to learn about the Athenian Riviera and sites passed like Flisvos Marina and Kavouri Beach. I recommend getting off at Astir Beach and spending an hour or two soaking up the sunshine or indulging in a cocktail at a nearby bar or beach club.
4:50pm – Return to the Acropolis & Parthenon Interchange
Catch the 4:52pm bus from Astir Beach to the Acropolis & Parthenon interchange and swap back to the Athens line.
6pm – Take the Athens Line Hop-on-Hop-off Bus Back to your Hotel
Catch the 6:08pm bus from the Acropolis & Parthenon interchange back to Syntagma Square (or the bus stop closest to your hotel).
I suggest finding a restaurant for dinner on the way back to your hotel so you don’t have to go out again. Try one of my other recommendations from Day 2.
Day 4
Day 4 is all about visiting as many museums and sites on the Athens City Pass All Inclusive as possible. Many sites close around 3pm or 4pm so most of the visiting will be done during the morning.
9am - Visit the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum
With your hop-on-hop-off bus ticket used up, the best way to get around today is on foot or via public transport. Your Athens City Pass has the option to include 72-hours free public transport, just validate your public transport ticket at the coloured stamping machines before your first ride.
Either walk or take the metro (nearest stop: Acropoli) to the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum and have your Athens City Pass scanned at the ticket counter. At this museum, you'll see exquisite pieces of gold and precious jewels that adorned the bodies of ancient Greeks during the prime of the civilisation's wealth. It's absolutely fascinating for any lover of jewelry or history, or both!
10am – Visit the Ancient Agora of Athens
Catch the metro from Acropoli station to Monastiraki station and walk about 2 minutes to the Ancient Agora of Athens. Make sure you have your Acropolis Extended Area ticket with you as you'll need to show it at the entry gate.
I’d seen the Ancient Agora from the outside and I must admit, I had underestimated it. Inside the massive Agora site are ruins of ancient buildings dating back to the Classical period, some better preserved than others. We walked passed ancient houses, through ancient law courts, and visited an ancient Greek temple and a Byzantine church, to name a few.
Within the Agora site is a museum housed inside the Stoa of Attalos. The museum exhibits items mainly relating to the Athenian democracy like statues, sculptures, coins, and inscriptions. The most interesting display for me was the ancient Greek jury selection process.
11:30am – Visit the Herakleidon Museum
Walk about 8 minutes from the Ancient Agora of Athens to the Heraklieidon Museum and have your Athens City Pass scanned at the ticket desk. This museum focuses on the achievements of the ancient Greeks with interactive exhibits based on science, art, and mathematic. The exhibits explain the ancient Greek approach to concepts like war, astronomy, and trade in a fascinating yet thought-provoking way.
12:30pm - Visit Hadrian’s Library
Hadrian’s Library is a 10-minute walk east from the Heraklieidon Museum. The ticket office is located through the entry gate and under the staircase. Present your Acropolis Extended Area ticket then spend around 20 minutes exploring the ruins of the 2,000-year-old forum constructed to house papyrus scrolls.
1:30pm – Lunch
Find a nearby taverna or café to stop for lunch. I recommend Taverne Platanos, famous for their Spanakopita (spinach pie) or Ydria Cafe.
2:30pm – Visit the Roman Agora / Roman Forum and Tower of the Winds
Walk another 5 minutes south to reach the Roman Agora and go straight to the entry gate at the west end of the complex with your blue Acropolis Extended Area ticket.
Within the forum are ruins of several buildings from the Roman empire’s rule in Greece as well the Tower of the Winds, a 2,000-year-old clock tower believed to be the world’s first meteorological station with a sundial, water clock, and wind vane.
3:30pm – Visit Aristotle’s Lyceum
Take the metro from Monastiraki station to Evangelismos station and walk 8 minutes to Aristotle's Lyceum. Present your Acropolis Extended Area ticket and spend around 30 minutes exploring ruins of an ancient temple to Apollo and a peripatetic school founded by Aristotle.
4:30pm - Return to your hotel
Take the metro from Evangelismos Metro Station to Syntagma Metro Station, or whichever metro station is closest to your hotel. Take the evening to rest in your hotel before finding a nearby restaurant for dinner.
Alternatively, to congratulate yourself on an itinerary well done, grab a drink or two at 360 Cocktail Bar or A For Athens (rooftop) located on Monastiraki Square, which provide brilliant views of the Acropolis.
Additional Days
If you have extra days in Athens, make the most of your Athens City Pass by visiting the Keramikos Archaeological Site and Museum which I couldn’t fit into this 4-day itinerary.
You could also take a free walking tour (summer only), go on a shopping spree with up to 20% discount at the McArthur Glen Designer Outlet, go on a sailing tour with 30% off Yacht Hop tours, or make use of the several other discounts included in your Athens City Pass.
The Bottom Line
Athens is a city that overflows with ancient history. Literally. Inner city construction works are frequently stopped when potentially-valuable ruins are uncovered by workers.
Choosing which of this city’s many museums and ancient ruins to visit can be a daunting task, so I let my Turbopass All Inclusive Athens City Pass do the hard work for me. This itinerary is jam-packed to get the most value out of your Athens City Pass and to enjoy 4 days in Athens.
By the end of your holiday you’ll definitely be exhausted, but you’ll also be enlightened by the wonder of the ancient Greeks.
Hmmm… maybe it’s time to put on a toga and consider the meaning of life like Aristotle.
Or you could just read some of my other recent articles about Athens! Both are sure to make you wiser. ;-)
Reader Comments...
"I respond to every comment by direct private email. I look forward to your feedback" - Josh BenderNice post thanks for sharing
You could replace the Benaki Museum for the Children's Museum and add Yoleni's for a lunch. And everything is walkable other than Pireaus and Vouliagmeni neighborhood. You don't need to use the hop-on hop-off bus so much for inside the city center.
wow thanks for all the information. Im planning my first trip t Greece and your site was very informative and helpful. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
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