25 min
45 min
M3
10.8 / km²
1
0
594
−9% vs city
Counted from OpenStreetMap and Inside Airbnb (CC BY 4.0)
Staying in Pagkrati
Pangrati sits east of the Panathenaic Stadium and south of Kolonaki: a grid of 1960s apartment blocks around Plateia Plastira and Plateia Varnava, the First Cemetery on its western edge, and the Ilissos valley running through it. Ten years ago nobody suggested staying here. Now it has the best concentration of ordinary good restaurants in central Athens.
It works as a base because it is a real neighbourhood that happens to be close in. Syntagma is a twenty-minute walk, the Acropolis about thirty, and the squares fill with Athenians rather than tour groups every evening. Prices for a flat sit well below Plaka or Kolonaki for more space and a quieter night.
The two costs are transport and sights. There is no metro station inside Pangrati - Evangelismos on M3 is a ten-minute walk from the northern edge and further from everywhere else - so you walk or take a bus. And apart from the stadium, nothing here is old: this is a twentieth-century district, and the classical Athens you came for is all to the west.
What works
- The best density of everyday good restaurants in central Athens
- About 20 minutes on foot to Syntagma, 30 to the Acropolis
- Real neighbourhood squares - Plastira and Varnava - used by residents
- Flats cost well below Kolonaki or Plaka for noticeably more space
What does not
- No metro station inside the district; Evangelismos is a walk away
- Nothing ancient here apart from the Panathenaic Stadium at the edge
- Mostly 1960s apartment blocks, which is not what you flew here to see
- Uphill going east, and further out than the listings suggest
In the second decade of the 21st century, Pangrati has experienced a renaissance as a destination for hipsters, with concomitant gentrification, house price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability.One of the most important landmarks of Pangrati is the Panathinaiko Stadium that hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.