Athens

The Acropolis has been the defining image of Athens for so long it's easy to forget it's an active, ongoing restoration project, not a finished museum piece — scaffolding and cranes have been part of the Parthenon's silhouette for decades as conservators work to stabilize and, where possible, reverse damage from centuries of war, pollution, and an infamous 17th-century gunpowder explosion. Visiting early, at or near opening, beats both the crowds and the worst of the heat, which by midday in summer makes the exposed hilltop genuinely punishing.

The Acropolis Museum, at the base of the hill, is built directly over an active archaeological excavation, visible through glass floors in the entrance, and the top floor is deliberately aligned with the Parthenon's actual orientation, positioned so the building's frieze fragments can be viewed in something close to their original spatial relationship. It's a newer building, opened in 2009, designed specifically to make the case for returning the Parthenon Marbles currently held in the British Museum — a debate the museum doesn't shy away from.

Plaka, the old neighborhood spilling down the Acropolis's northern slope, survived Athens's rapid 20th-century development mostly intact, and its narrow lanes include Anafiotika, a small pocket built by workers from the island of Anafi in the 1800s, whitewashed and Cycladic in style in a way that looks transplanted from a Greek island rather than the mainland capital.

Athens carries a reputation for chaotic traffic and dense, uneven modern architecture, some of it fair, and the contrast between that and the ancient sites is part of what makes the city interesting rather than purely a liability — Monastiraki and the streets around it hold some of the best street art in southern Europe, spray-painted across apartment blocks a few minutes' walk from ruins older than most countries.

For most visitors, Athens functions as much as a gateway as a destination in its own right — Piraeus, the city's port, connects by ferry to most of the Greek islands, Santorini included, which makes a few days in the city a natural bookend to an island-hopping trip rather than a standalone visit. Cape Sounion, an hour or so outside the city, adds a worthwhile half-day option: the ruined Temple of Poseidon on a coastal cliff, particularly striking at sunset.