If you’d like to visit Athens but you’re not sure how many days you’re going to need to explore it thoroughly, we’ll try to help you with that today. How many days do you need for Athens? Is one or two days enough? Let’s take a look.
Naturally, we can’t answer that for you definitively. Every tourist comes to Athens with their own idea of what Athens is – how much do they care to see, how fast do they want to go about it, etc. As such, apart from the one-day itinerary, we’ll try to prescribe options for those of you who want to go a bit slower too. Before we begin, a few tips:
- If you don’t care to immerse yourself in the city by strolling around it, use public transport, it’ll save you a lot of time
- You can buy the slightly more expensive tickets online to skip some of the queues, as these can be a real nuisance in the high season
- Have some cash with you, as it may be difficult to find an ATM at times – there are also places where you can only pay in cash
- Though it may be more expensive, we’d still recommend you at least look for accommodation near the centre to save time on transport
One day in Athens
How much can you see in one day?
First, let’s start with how long it’ll take us to just walk between the main attractions of Athens – this is time without actually entering the monuments or stopping by them whatsoever. To walk by the Acropolis, the National Archeological Museum, the Agora, the Temple of Zeus, Panathinaiko, Monastikari and the Plaka district, it’d take us almost three hours of continuous walking. Therefore, if you don’t mind the hasty pace and you want to see everything that we’ve just listed, you can do so in one day, just don’t expect too much time to actually take the sights in. You’ll also have to add time for lunch or coffee.
Two days in Athens
What can you see in two days?
If you have two days on your hands, we’d recommend taking the 1-day itinerary and actually taking it slow. Actually pay a proper visit to these sites, enter the museum and take a walk through the various neighbourhoods like Plaka or Monastiraki. You also get an actual evening this way and you can use it to admire the beautiful sunset overlooking the Parthenon.
Three days in Athens
What can you see in three days?
Three days is what we’d consider ideal for Athens. If you cover the baseline of what we listed above, we’d one of two options: you either explore the centre of Athens more if you’re still craving for the city itself or you take a city break and go for a half-day trip to Delphi to see its various surviving treasures, like the Temple of Apollo or the ancient theatre.
Four days in Athens
What can you see in four days?
At this point, we’d genuinely recommend taking that city break. You can opt for Meteora, Mycenae, Epidaurus or Nafplion, and they’ll all be great for a bit of a getaway from the crowds, especially if you’re visiting in the high season. Apart from that, you can also spend more time in the centre itself and have a very relaxed exploration of the main attractions.
One week in Athens
How about a whole week?
Though you’ll certainly find enough to see in a week, it’s an option that may be too extreme for some. Of course, you can add more of the smaller towns to the mix or hop onto the beach – or combine Athens with another area of Greece and have two trips in one!
How many days do you actually need in Athens?
What’s right for you?
As you can see, one day in Athens is theoretically possible but we’d highly advise against it. It’ll be like going through a slideshow of Greece instead of actually enjoying it. We’d say that three days is about ideal, though you can also get a decent feel for things in two days. Four days is a very good amount of time to truly immerse yourself in Athens and the area around it.
And if you wish, you could probably find enough to see for weeks. It’s only a matter of dosing it so you don’t get tired of it in the process.
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