Athens Tickets

Athens tickets give entry to the museums, monuments and parks of the Greek capital. They sit beside the Greece tours that start in Athens.

What do Athens tickets mean?

Athens tickets are tickets for places linked to Athens. The name Athens can point to three different areas. The first is the municipality, which is the city’s own local-government area. The other two are Greater Athens and the whole Athens Metropolitan Area.

Athens tickets lead to a city with a long and changing story. After the war of independence, Athens shrank until only about 4,000 people lived there. Athens became the capital of Greece in 1834, following Nafplion. The capital of a country is the city that hosts its government.

No other municipality in Greece has a larger population than the municipality of Athens. The municipality of Athens is divided into seven municipal communities. These communities are smaller districts inside the municipality, much like local neighbourhoods. When Athens tickets name the municipality, only the city itself is meant.

An urban area is the built-up part of a region. There, streets and buildings run on from one place to the next, joining towns together. The Athens urban area spans over 412 square kilometres of such land. Today it consists of 40 municipalities, each run by its own local council.

A metropolitan area is a city together with the towns around it. The Athens Metropolitan Area includes 58 municipalities, organised in seven regional units. Each regional unit is an official district that helps organise local government. Under this meaning, Athens tickets point to a whole region rather than one city.

• Two centres: Athens and Piraeus serve as the two metropolitan centres of the Athens Metropolitan Area.
• Four zones: The suburbs of Athens are divided into four zones, north, south, east and west.
• Old settlement: People have lived in Athens without a break for at least 5,000 years.

Athens tickets therefore depend on which Athens is meant by the writer. The name can stand for a single municipality or for a wide metropolitan region around it. A reader who checks the area first can judge every page about tickets with more confidence.

On Athens tickets, what does the National Archaeological Museum bring?

Athens tickets for the National Archaeological Museum lead to a public collection of finds. The finds come from sites around Greece where experts dig up the past. They span prehistory, the time before writing, to late antiquity, which covers the final centuries of ancient times.

A museum keeps old objects for the public. Athens tickets for this museum relate to a building begun in 1866 and completed in 1889. Eleni Tositsa donated the land on which it stands. Ludwig Lange drew the first plan, and Panagis Kalkos later modified it as main architect, the lead designer.

In World War II, the antiquities went into protective boxes that were sealed, then buried. The aim was to avoid destruction and looting, which means theft in times of conflict. Antiquities are objects made in ancient times. Athens tickets to this museum therefore link to a story of protection.

The Egyptian collection includes more than 6000 artefacts, which are objects made by people. In 1893 the Egyptian government offered nine mummies from Bab el-Gasus to the collection. A mummy is a body kept from decay. Anyone choosing Athens tickets by topic can note that the museum covers more than Greece alone.

A bronze statue from around 670 BC, showing the princess-priestess Takushit, forms the Egyptian collection’s centrepiece. Bronze is a hard metal made by mixing copper and tin. The statue measures 70 cm and wears a gown covered in hieroglyphs, the picture writing of ancient Egypt. It was found south of Alexandria.

• Cycladic collection: It features small marble statues, called figurines, from the Aegean islands of Delos and Keros, including the Lutist.
• Golden cups: Two cups from Vafeio show a scene of the capture of a bull.
• Epigraphical Museum: Housed in the south wing, it keeps the world’s richest collection of inscriptions, or carved writing.

The museum reopened in July 2004. This was in time for the Athens Olympics, a global sports event held in the city. Readers comparing Athens tickets can weigh this history. It helps to decide how the museum fits their plans.

On Athens tickets, what does the Benaki Museum add?

Athens tickets can lead to the Benaki Museum, founded by Antonis Benakis in 1930. He set it up in memory of his father Emmanuel. A museum is a building that keeps works of art. This one holds Greek works of art from prehistoric times to modern times.

In 1931 the Benakis family gave their Athens house and over 37,000 Islamic and Byzantine objects. Islamic means linked to the Muslim world. Byzantine refers to the Greek-speaking empire of the Middle Ages. The founder, Antonis Benakis, stayed active in the museum until his death in 1954.

Angelos Delivorrias worked as director of the museum. Objects, books and documents numbering more than 60,000 were added under his direction. A collection is a group of items kept together and cared for as one body. Athens tickets for the Benaki Museum link to a collection that grew under his direction.

In 1973 director Angelos Delivorrias came up with the idea to refocus the museum. Islamic art and Chinese porcelain moved elsewhere, so the main Athens museum focuses solely on Greece. Porcelain is a fine, hard kind of pottery. Athens tickets for the main museum therefore belong to a Greek-focused place.

The re-opening in 2000 led to satellite museums, which focus on specific collections. A satellite museum is a smaller branch that stands apart from the main building. Each one has its own focus. Athens tickets matter here because the Benaki Museum is a group of sites, not a single building.

• Kouloura Mansion: The seaside mansion, a large grand house in Palaio Phaliro, houses the Toy Museum.
• Penelope Delta House: The house in Kifissia holds the Historical Archive Collection, which is a store of old records.
• Islamic art: Its collections sit in neoclassical buildings, which borrow ancient Greek styles, in the Kerameikos district of Athens.

The Benaki Museum of Islamic Art was inaugurated, which means formally opened, on 27 July 2004. The museum also holds an extensive collection of Asian art. For readers weighing Athens tickets, the Benaki Museum offers a wide range of art, not only Greek works.

On Athens tickets, what does the Byzantine and Christian Museum add?

Athens tickets can lead a visitor to the Byzantine and Christian Museum, which stands on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue. Its collections cover works dating from the 3rd century AD through the Late Middle Ages. Byzantine describes the Christian Greek-speaking world of the Middle Ages.

Athens tickets point to places with long histories, and this museum has one. It was founded in 1914. At first, it sat on the first floor of the Academy, a place of learning and study. A museum is a place that cares for old objects and shares them with the public.

The museum later moved to the Ilissia Villa. A villa is a large house, and this one dates from the year 1848. It is linked to the Duchesse de Plaisance, the French form of Duchess of Plaisance. Stamatios Kleanthis was the architect of the villa, the person who designed it.

Athens tickets point to places, and the villa’s architect has a story too. Kleanthis, the villa architect, was born in the Macedonian town of Velventos in 1802. He also operated marble quarries on the island of Paros. Stone is cut out of a quarry, which is a large pit in the ground.

The villa was the main house of the Duchess of Plaisance in Athens. It was her winter residence, a home for the cold season. The duchess, Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, was born in Philadelphia, where her father served as French consul. A consul is an official who works for one country while living in another.

• Rare collections: The rare collections include pictures, holy writings, fabrics and copies of objects made by people.
• Reopening: The museum reopened to the public in June 2004 after an extensive renovation and an added wing.
• Ilisia district: The Ilisia district of Athens is named after the Ilisos river.

Evangelismos station is the metro stop for reaching the museum. The metro is the underground train system of the whole city. In a plan built around Athens tickets, this stop adds a Byzantine and Christian chapter to the day.

On Athens tickets, what does the Numismatic Museum add?

Athens tickets lead travellers to museums, which are places where objects of the past are kept. The Numismatic Museum adds a collection of over 500,000 coins, medals, engraved gems, weights and stamps. Numismatic means relating to coins, and a collection is a group of items.

The Numismatic Museum’s Ancient Greek coinage is one of the richest collections in the world. Coinage means all the coins that were made in one place and at one time. Engraved gems, which also sit in the holdings, are small stones with designs cut into their surface.

The museum is housed in the former mansion of the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. A mansion is a large, grand house. An archaeologist studies the past by digging up old objects. The mansion is named Iliou Melathron, a Greek phrase meaning Palace of Ilion. The building has three stories, which means three floors.

Athens tickets for this museum relate to a mansion considered the grandest private residence in Athens when finished. Its design draws on two styles, Renaissance Revival and Neoclassicism. Renaissance Revival borrows from the Renaissance, a period of art and learning. Neoclassicism copies the style of ancient Greek and Roman buildings.

Anyone who plans Athens tickets can begin with the street address of this museum. It stands at 12 Panepistimiou Street, near Syntagma Square. The Syntagma metro station serves the museum. A metro is a city’s underground train system, and a station is a stop on that system.

• Garden: The museum garden has a museum shop and a coffeehouse, which is a cafe.
• Interior: The interior is influenced by Pompeii, an ancient Roman town.
• Rooms: Rooms carry tile mosaics and wall murals showing Trojan War scenes or Greek mottos.

The Numismatic Museum was founded in 1838, in the same era as the National Archaeological Museum. Archaeological relates to learning about earlier eras by examining old objects. Athens tickets for either museum tie travellers to the same period of the city’s past.

On Athens tickets, what does the War Museum add?

Athens tickets can lead to the Athens War Museum, the military museum of the Greek Armed Forces. A museum is a public building that keeps a collection, which means a set of gathered objects. A military museum centres on the armies and wars of one country.

Anyone planning a day around Athens tickets can find the War Museum in the Athens city centre. The museum is served by the Evangelismos metro station. A metro is an underground railway. A station is a stop where passengers get on and off the trains.

Athens tickets for the War Museum lead to a site with a clear start date. The government decided in 1964 to create a war museum, and it was founded in 1969. The museum was inaugurated, or formally opened, on July 18, 1975. President Konstantinos Tsatsos and Defense Minister Evangelos Averoff performed the inauguration.

A team of architects headed by Professor Thucydides Valentis designed the building that Athens tickets lead to. Architects are the experts who plan how a building looks and works. The building went up in 1972 in a modern style with Bauhaus influences. Bauhaus was a design school that favoured plain, practical shapes.

Beyond the Athens site, the museum runs branches in Thessaloniki, Chania, Rethymno, Nauplion, Tripoli, Kalamata and Chalkida. A branch is an extra site that belongs to the same museum. The branches are run by that same museum, so the institution is more than one building.

• Weapons: Officer and collector Petros Saroglos donated the permanent weapons collection to the Greek Army.
• Maps: The museum holds maps and engravings, prints from carved plates, mainly from Greece and neighbouring regions.
• Levels: Exhibition areas spread over four levels and present Greek history, beginning in ancient times and running up to today.

Travellers weighing Athens tickets for a history-focused day can add the War Museum to the plan. Its exhibits cover the Balkan Wars, World War One, the Asia Minor Campaign and World War Two. These conflicts give the exhibits a clear military focus.

On Athens tickets, what does the Metropolitan Cathedral add?

Athens tickets add a church with a national role: the Metropolitan Cathedral. It is the cathedral church of the Archbishopric of Athens and the whole of Greece. People popularly call it the Metropolis, or Mitropoli. The main church of an archbishop or bishop is called a cathedral.

Construction began on Christmas Day, 1842, when King Otto and Queen Amalia laid the cornerstone. A cornerstone is the first stone set at the base of a new building. It marks the start of the work. Planners who weigh Athens tickets can note that this church has a firm start date.

The architect Theophil Hansen led the start of construction. An architect designs a building and plans how it is built. After him, three more people continued the work: Dimitris Zezos, Panagis Kalkos and François Boulanger. So the work passed through more than one set of hands before it was complete.

Workers used marble from 72 demolished churches to build the cathedral’s immense walls. The King and Queen dedicated the completed cathedral on the twenty-first day of the fifth month, 1862. To dedicate a church is to set it apart for worship. Anyone comparing Athens tickets can add that date to their notes.

The Metropolitan Cathedral is a domed basilica with three aisles. A basilica is a long, hall-shaped church, and aisles are parallel passages along its length. A dome is a rounded roof. It measures 40 metres long, 20 metres wide and 24 metres high. Those figures help a planner of Athens tickets judge the building’s scale.

• Tombs: It holds the tombs of Saint Philothei and Patriarch Gregory V, both killed in the Ottoman period.
• Neighbour: The little Church of Saint Eleftherios stands immediately south of the cathedral.
• Square: Two statues stand in Mitropoleos Square in front of the cathedral.

Patriarch Gregory V, a senior church leader, was hanged by order of Sultan Mahmud II, an Ottoman ruler. For Athens tickets built around history, the Metropolitan Cathedral adds a church story full of dates and names.

On Athens tickets, what does the Presidential Guard add?

Athens tickets point travellers toward the city’s sights. The Presidential Guard, a group of soldiers, adds a story of ceremony. It is the last unit of Evzones, as its soldiers are called, in the Hellenic Army. The Hellenic Army is the army of Greece.

A Royal Decree is a law issued by a king. One dated 24 December 1868 first established the guard as a battalion-sized unit called the Agema. A battalion is a large body of soldiers. For anyone who buys Athens tickets, that decree marks where the story of the guard starts.

Men of the Agema held one rank higher than their nominal rank, meaning the rank on paper. That added to the prestige of the unit, which means its high standing. The guard took the name Presidential Guard in 1973. That came after the monarchy, rule by a royal family, was abolished.

Anyone with Athens tickets in mind can note that the Evzone uniform has its own history. Its roots lie with the klephts, fighters in the Greek War of Independence, whose clothes it evolved from. The farion is a scarlet fez, a brimless cap, with a black silk tassel and the national emblem.

Two Evzones stand beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a memorial to soldiers who were never named. Two more stand at the entrance of the Presidential Mansion, a large stately house. Beyond Athens tickets, the Evzones set a minimum height of 1.87 metres for joining. A minimum height is the lowest height allowed.

• Flag: Guard personnel raise and lower the Greek flag on the Acropolis hill of Athens in a solemn ceremony.
• Easter: The guard receives the Holy Fire from Jerusalem at Easter, the Christian spring holiday.
• Barracks: The barracks, where the soldiers live, are the Georgios Tzavellas Camp, directly in front of the Presidential Mansion.

In short, Athens tickets belong to a city trip, and the guard adds a living tradition. The red leather clogs are called tsarouchia, and clogs are a kind of shoe. Depending on size, the clogs carry 60 to 120 nails beneath their soles.

On Athens tickets, what does the Zappeion add?

Athens tickets are a way into the city’s history, and the Zappeion adds an Olympic chapter. Built specifically for the Olympic Games revival, it was the first such building. Here, revival means that the Olympic Games were started again.

The story behind Athens tickets for the Zappeion starts with land. Parliament is the body that makes laws. It allocated 80,000 square metres of land between the Palace Gardens and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. A cornerstone, meaning the first block placed in a new building, was laid on 20 January 1874.

Danish architect Theophil Hansen designed the Zappeion. Anyone who draws up plans for buildings holds that job title. Evangelos Zappas was the benefactor, which means a donor who supports a project. He did not live long enough to see the Zappeion built. He nominated his cousin Konstantinos Zappas to complete the building after his death.

The Zappeion opened its doors on 20 October 1888. The building keeps one odd detail about its benefactor. The head of Evangelos Zappas is ‘buried’ inside a wall in the Zappeion. That detail is worth remembering when Athens tickets are on a travel list for the city.

Documents for Greece’s accession, or joining, to the European Community were signed in the atrium. That atrium is a central hall clad in marble. The signing took place in the fifth month of 1979. The European Community was a group of states. Athens tickets for the Zappeion link a traveller to that national story.

• Rooms: The building holds about 25 distinct rooms, from 97 to 984 square metres in size.
• Athletes: In 1906 the Zappeion served as the Olympic Village, the place where athletes stayed.
• Broadcast: In 1938 the country’s first national broadcaster, a body that sends out programmes, began operating in the Zappeion.

The Zappeion is currently used as a conference and exhibition center for public and private purposes. A conference is a formal meeting, and an exhibition is a public show. With Athens tickets in mind, old stories and working rooms share one address here.

On Athens tickets, what does the National Garden add?

Athens tickets can be planned around the National Garden. This park lies directly behind the Greek Parliament building, also called the Old Palace. It sits between the Athens districts, or neighbourhoods, of Kolonaki and Pangrati. Those two names help to place it on a map.

A bust is a statue of a person’s head and shoulders. Busts of Ioannis Kapodistrias and Jean-Gabriel Eynard stand on the southeast side of the garden. Busts of the poets Dionysios Solomos and Aristotelis Valaoritis stand on the south side. Anyone sorting Athens tickets can note these names as landmarks.

The garden also encloses ancient ruins. These include column drums, Corinthian capitals and mosaics. A column drum is one round block of a stacked stone pillar. The carved top of a pillar, decorated with leaves, is called a Corinthian capital. A mosaic forms a picture out of tiny chips of stone or glass.

Amalia planted twelve palms, and the garden entrance was moved to them. A palm is a tree with a tall trunk and long leaves. The main entrance opens on Leoforos Amalias, a street named after the queen who envisioned the park. Details like these help when Athens tickets are sorted into a day plan.

The garden’s German designer imported animals, including peacocks, ducks and turtles. Botanists Karl Nikolas Fraas, Theodor von Heldreich and Spyridon Miliarakis also planned and managed the garden. A botanist is an expert who studies plants. Readers planning Athens tickets can treat the garden as a park shaped by experts.

• Royal refuge: A fenced part behind the Old Palace in the upper garden was the king and queen’s private refuge.
• Pet monkey: King Alexander was bitten by a pet monkey while walking in the garden on 30 September 1920.
• Villa find: A Roman villa, meaning a large house, with a mosaic is found inside the garden.

Henry Miller wrote in 1939 that the garden stayed in his memory like no other park. That line is a fair reason to add the garden to a city plan. Readers who plan around Athens tickets can note it.

On Athens tickets, what does the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center add?

Athens tickets for culture gain a modern stop at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s Cultural Center, an arts centre. Architect Renzo Piano designed the whole complex. It houses new facilities for the Greek National Opera, plus the National Library of Greece.

The story began in 1998, when the Stavros Niarchos Foundation first planned a large-scale donation. A donation is a gift. In 2006 the foundation decided to build one complex for both the library and the opera. Travellers who research Athens tickets can trace the centre back to that choice.

Construction works on the centre started in 2012. Construction works are the building stage, when workers turn plans on paper into walls, floors and roofs. The project was completed in 2016, which ended that stage. Anyone planning Athens tickets for culture can count the centre as a recent addition to the city.

Piano pictured the centre as a piece of the Earth’s crust, dislodged and pushed up from the ground. The crust is the planet’s hard outer layer, and dislodged means knocked loose from its place. An artificial hill, one built by people, carries the roofs of both the library and the opera house.

The library sits lower, and the hill ends with the opera house. An opera is a stage show where singers tell a story with music. Piano says the canopy, a roof-like cover, represents a cloud hovering over the hill’s highest point. Anyone comparing Athens tickets can retell that design in plain words.

• Opera hall: The opera design includes a 1,400-seat auditorium, the space where an audience sits.
• Black box theatre: The opera design also adds a 400-seat black box theatre, a plain and flexible room for stage shows.
• Solar roof: A 100×100 meter field of solar panels makes around 3 GWh, a measure of electricity, each year.

In 2017 the centre became a donation to the Greek state, so the state received a gift. Anyone sorting Athens tickets for culture can add the centre as a modern stop with a clear story.

On Athens tickets, what questions come up?

Athens tickets point to a city served by an international airport. The city lies in the region of Attica, with the Saronic Gulf to its south. Weather records from the Neos Kosmos station in downtown Athens show how the seasons run through the year.

Which airport serves Athens tickets?

The Athens airport project revived in 1991, roughly a year after Atlanta won the 1996 Games over Athens. Athens International Airport’s annual traffic passed the twenty million mark, rising 10.7% on the year before. Varis-Koropiou Avenue reaches the airport from the western part, Spata-Loutsa Avenue from the east.

Which season suits Athens tickets?

The Neos Kosmos station in downtown Athens records an October average high of 24.1 °C. The Neos Kosmos station also records an April average rainfall of 19.0 millimetres. For July, the Neos Kosmos station records an average rainfall of 5.9 millimetres.

Which region holds Athens tickets?

Attica is a region on the eastern edge of Central Greece. Besides Athens, it holds the cities of Elefsina, Megara, Laurium and Marathon. More than 95% of its people live in the Athens metropolitan area. The name covers the city and the built-up land around it.

Which gulf lies south of Athens tickets?

Phalerum was a port of ancient Athens, set in a bay on the Saronic Gulf. It was the major port of Athens before Themistocles developed the Piraeus harbours from 491 BC. Legend says Menestheus sailed for Troy from Phalerum, and Theseus sailed from there to Crete.