So much beauty

Athens really has become a very beautiful city since its facelift in the run-up to the Olympic Games of 2004. Among its aesthetic pleasures are the boulevard Vasilissis Sofias, with the beautiful houses of the well off and its modern buildings, theatres and museums, including the Byzantine and Christian Museum, with its glorious courtyard. And Syntagma Square, overlooked by the extraordinary Vouli (parliament), in front of which the Evzones guards parade in their richly-brocaded costumes in a kind of ballet where they play the role of dragonflies. 

Plaka is another beautiful spot. It is a delight to wander around, above all in Anafiotika, a sort of small village at the heart of the area. From there, and especially at sunset, you can climb up the Acropolis hill along winding lanes or on a wide pedestrian street, which at the time of the Courier’s visit had just witnessed the opening of the new Acropolis Museum, the pet project  of the late Melina Mercouri, artist and fighter against the regime of the colonels, and later Minister of Culture. And on the Acropolis itself, the restored theatre, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, is breathtaking!

And yet there is so much more. There are the National Gardens, with the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s column, and the countless museums. And around them there are the lanes and alleyways perfumed with the scent of flowers and mandarin blossom, and then, further afield, surrounding towns like Maroussi, with its vast Olympic stadium, its village charm and its delicate and varied traditional pastries.

The island of your dreams, a mere step away

Going from Athens to the nearby islands, there is no alternative but to pass through the beautiful harbour of Piraeus. The closest of the country’s two thousand islands are the Saronic Islands. Three of these are the most popular, and a day is enough to visit them. First is the furthest, Hydra, about ninety minutes away from Piraeus, an island without motor vehicles where the only traffic is the donkeys, and where the jet set took up residence in the sixties, led by Leonard Cohen. Then there is Aegina, with its superb temple of Athena Aphaïa, its pediment sculptures long housed in Munich, and finally Poros, dazzling with its cascade of beautiful white houses brightened up with pastel shades, on a hill plummeting down to the sea. 

Rhodes, the island and the town

Also in the Aegean Sea is the archipelago of the Dodecanese, surrounding the island of Rhodes. The town of Rhodes is magnificent, but the island also takes pride in other jewels, among which is the wonderful Lindos. 

The town of Rhodes, founded in 408 BC, is a marriage of the modern – a sea front with capes and coves tastefully landscaped for anchoring yachts – and the medieval "Old Town", a World Heritage Site since 1988. The Old Town is encircled by a triple wall, built by the Knights of the Order of St John from 1306 onwards. Every square inch of the old town is spellbinding, but among all its wonders do not miss the Ibrahim Pasha and Suleiman mosques, the very small 13th-century Byzantine church of St Phanourios, not mentioned in most of the guidebooks, the hammam baths and the synagogue. 

To the south-east of Rhodes, Lindos is delightful, with its acropolis perched high above, topped by the temple of Athena Linda, and its interlocking lanes and stairways snaking around its houses like a film set on the hill. Far down below, there are the tempting beaches of crystalline, gold-tinged waters. It was on one of these beaches, taken over today by nudists, that the apostle St Paul began his evangelization in the year 43 AD. 

Hegel Goutier