A map of Athens neighborhoods

Consider this a brief, visual guide to help you locate various Athens neighborhoods and easily navigate the city. Although Google Maps now makes mention of most of these neighborhoods, you have to zoom in or zoom out at the right level to spot them. And you may also confuse them with municipalities neighboring Athens since there is no concrete barrier from one municipality to the other.

In the map, I've included a few brief comments for each neighborhood. The central ones (around the Acropolis) are those holding the most interest for tourists and visitors to the city and together with some southern, coastal municipalities they host the majority of hotels.

Of course, the limits of each neighborhood are approximate since they are just unofficial, customary subdivisions of the city. Their names often come from the past and/or may be related to some local landmark that may or may not carry the same significance currently as it did in the past. Occasionally, neighbourhood names may overlap or some large neighbourhood may be -unofficially- divided into smaller ones. In this map I just stuck with the larger ones, as my goal is to give you a general feel of direction if you're wondering about where to stay, where to go or what to do.
With the expansion of the Metro system, areas are now often named after Metro Stations, while it is also not uncommon for people to refer to an area by the name of the main avenues that cross it (Patission St./ Liossion St. / Iera Odos / Syngrou Ave. etc.). In this  latter case, the average Athenian usually has in mind certain connotations that accompany each avenue. To stick to the above examples these connotations would be: retail shops / car & taxi workshops / bouzouki clubs & car dealerships / frequented by transvestites and  other night people... So, if you discern a smile in people when you say you'll be staying at Syngrou Ave. you now know why...

Making a big generalization, I would say that the southern, eastern and northern parts of the city are the safer ones, while those extending west of center are less so (west of Patission St. / at Omonia Sq, Metaxourgeio, Victoria, Aghios Nikolaos, Kato Patissia and part of the "Historic Triangle"). I have walked almost everywhere during the day without anything happening to me but this is not the case for everybody.

Click on the link: Athens Walker - Athens neighborhoods to see a larger map with explanations

Here are the main neighborhoods by name.  Ease of access depends mostly on transit availability and not so much on the nominal distance from city center. I tried listing them all from the center on outwards but it just wouldn't make any sense, so the first list is the more central neighborhoods and the 2nd list are all the rest.

City Center a.k.a. Istoriko Trigono (Historic Triangle) (Syntagma Sq, Omonia Sq, etc.)
Plaka
Monastiraki
Thission (a.k.a. Thissio)
National Garden / Syntagma / Zappeio
Markygianni / Acropolis
Neapoli / Pefkakia / Exarcheia
Kolonaki
Lykavittos (a.k.a. Lycabettus)
Ambelokipoi (a.k.a. Ampelokipi)
Gazi (a.k.a. Kerameikos)

Akademia Platonos
Aghios Nikolaos
Agios Panteleimonas
Colonus (a.k.a. Kolonos) / Liossion / Lenormant
Goudi
Gyzi
Ilissia
Kaisariani
Kolokynthou
Koukaki
Kypseli / Nea Kypseli / Ano Kypseli
Metaxourgeio
Neos Kosmos
Pagrati (a.k.a. Pangrati)
Patissia / Ano Patissia / Kato Patissia
Petralona (Ano Petralona / Kato Petralona)
Polygono
Rizoupoli / Promponas
Sepolia / Skouze Hill (Lofos Skouze)
Victoria Sq.
Votanikos
Zografou

Why don't you follow me on twitter?

Images from Athens, on Twitter

From now on, you may also follow me on Twitter, where I shall tweet "images from Athens"; sometimes with words, sometimes with photos. My goal is to document life in Athens for the next 365 days of the year, with small snippets of reality; photographic and verbal / literary.

As a photographer, I know I shouldn't be doing this. Picking the right photos to show (and destroying the rest of them) is a good part of building a serious profile. And forcing myself to show one picture per day is really crossing my limits. However, the essence here is to capture things as they are, to push myself to overcome my boundaries and my inhibitions as a photographer and -last and least- to familiarize myself with using my newly acquired HTC cell phone. [If you are wondering on what type of camera is best for street photography read the interesting article and ensuing discussion here, as well as this]

As someone writing on Athens and Greece, my intention is to try to give visitors an idea of life here, without staying only on the "touristy" side of things, although that will be present too. I will, simply, follow my mood.

Most pictures will be outdoors, but not necessarily all of them. And many will be "simply" descriptions. 

Bottomline: Follow me on Twitter. 365 days from now we shall see the result of this.

 

In the meantime, I will continue to enrich the blog with larger guides, tips and walks from the greater Athens area.

(Update 2012-04-03: In short, total failure :) I lost my interest in Twitter fairly fast, although I still keep my account to notify about new posts and updates. Trying to find the next smartsy thing to say each day just doesn't interest me. And being continuously on the lookout for interesting street photographs is just not possible when you have a dozen things on your mind -and your good camera not always with you. However it was an interesting exercise. I have been concentrating on building a real, comprehensive guide of Athens and that is  -surprisingly - much easier to me as I can pace myself and use all of my free time, instead of just being out there prowling for pictures.)


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A Greek winery near Athens

Back to some positive stuff, now that the garbage problems seem to be over and the trash from the streets of Athens has been cleaned!

About two weeks ago, when the strike was still ongoing and walking in the center of town was not a pleasant experience, we chose to spend a Sunday afternoon at the Katogi & Strofilia winery, located south of Athens, about 1-1.5 hour from the center, 18kms before Cape Sounio.

The winery was organizing a Holiday bazaar - which as we learnt is a pre-Christmas tradition for them - offering visitors the chance to sample their wines, along with some accompanying snacks and Greek Christmas pastries.

It was a nice, sunny day, and the coastal road was fairly free of traffic. Quite a pleasant drive, even for us who are kind of used to it and take if for granted. The sea was blue and the sky was clear and sunny.

Katogi-Strofilia is the result of the merger of two formerly independent wineries: Katogi-Averoff (located in Metsovo, at the Region of Epiros) and Strofilia (located in Anavyssos, Attiki south of Athens). The result seems to have been a successful one, both commercially and quality-wise from what I'm reading... and tasting. The name "Strofilia" comes from the old, wooden, mechanical press that was used to extract the juice from the grapes.

Strofilia vineyeard, right next to the winery, in December

Winery entrance

Tasting room, behind the main building

Inside the tasting room. Pictures from the winery's past on the wall

I was most impressed with the wines produced in Epiros. The Traminer is a very aromatic dry, white wine while The Rossiu di Munte series showcases red, dry varieties (local and international ones)  cultivated at high altitudes in the mountains of Epiros, around Ioannina and Metsovo. You can read detailed information about  each wine in the winery's website. We bought some bottles for Christmas gifts and a few more for personal consumption... Again, you will find tonnes of details on the company's bilingual website.

Nice wrapping net, to protect the bottles...

Here they are... net-less, on our kitchen counter

An interesting linguistic notice is that many of the names are in the "Vlach" language, which was heavily used in Metsovo and other areas in Northern Greece. The Vlachs were a nomadic people, mostly practicing commerce and herding sheep, traveling between the areas of the current Balkan countries. They have for long been assimilated into the existing Balkan countries but you can still find traces of their culture here and there. The "Floara di Munte" (Mountain Flower) is another Vlach-named wine; a sparkling one for that matter,  made from the local Debina grape variety, which we will be drinking tonight, in lieu of champagne, to welcome the new year!

Getting there (updated 2013-03): First of all, make sure the winery can accept you on the day you want to visit. To get close by, take one of the "KTEL Attikis" (peri-urban) buses leaving almost every hour from Egyptou Sq. in the center of Athens going to the direction of either Anavyssos or Paralia Fokaias or Legraina or Cape Sounion via the coastal road. With either of these you may get off at Anavyssos (1.5hr. away ) and take a short taxi from there to the winery.

P.S. The name of the winery comes from an old winery machine. It is not connected with the Strofilia wetland  and forest in the west of Greece.

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