Luxury Vacations in Athens

Europe’s oldest capital is an inside-out museum, an antique liberated from its glass case. Relics and ruins, renewal and renaissance. In ancient mythology, Athena competed with Poseidon for the city. The goddess of wisdom won by gifting the city an olive tree and, with it, shade, food, oil, wood.

The city is as robust as the tree, riding out storms and droughts, feast and famine, and that durability has bred a dynamic generation of determined denizens across cultural and culinary pursuits. Breweries converted to art museums, warehouses transformed into restaurants, hotel rooms housed in former factories, high fashion presented in historic sites.

Alongside the Pentelic marble of the Parthenon, the time-worn temples, amphitheaters and patient caryatids, fresh-faced properties have sprung up in sync with the city’s revival. The Greek capital has been declared the new Berlin, but Athens and its intimately knitted neighborhoods are in a league of their own, thriving at a thrilling pace best witnessed first-hand.