An Introduction to Alekos Fassianos

He designed costumes and sets for theatrical works by Sartre and Ionesco, illustrated books by Louis Aragon and Guillaume Apollinaire, and succeeded in placing his mythological figures, his Cyclists and Smokers, in collections the world over. Alekos Fassianos, one of the most distinctive voices in modern Greek art and an important figure in postwar European painting, was born in 1935 in the neighbourhood of Aghios Pavlos in Metaxourgeio, in a neoclassical house with an inner courtyard. Today, on that very site, stands the museum that bears his name, dedicated to a multifaceted art career that began with his studies in 1956 and ran until his death in 2022. Visitors encounter artworks inspired by Byzantine art, ancient Greek history and contemporary Athens, alongside furniture, lighting fixtures, door handles, toys and ceramics, objects he made by hand with the same joy and inventiveness with which he painted. Until October 11, they can also enjoy the temporary exhibition “Malvina Panagiotidi: Bucolic Fever – Dialogue with Alekos Fassianos.” Xenia Georgiadou

Just Who Conquered Whom?

The Acropolis Museum’s new anniversary exhibition traces the extraordinary story of how Greek art journeyed to Italy and stamped its influence on Western civilization. Rome vanquished Greece but, as the Roman poet Horace observed, “Captive Greece captured her fierce conqueror.” A new exhibition, with free entrance, at the Acropolis Museum explores how that happened.

Presented as part of the Museum’s 17th anniversary celebrations, the exhibition “Inspirations: Ancient Art Living in Italy” brings together 38 exceptional works from some of Italy’s most important museums. Most of these pieces do not travel abroad at all, making this a rare chance to encounter masterpieces usually seen only in Italian collections. The exhibition follows the remarkable journey of Greek art from the first contacts between Greek traders and the peoples of Italy in the 8th century BC to the rise of Rome and beyond. Visitors discover how Greek styles, myths and ideas were embraced by Etruscans and Romans, shaping everything from notions of taste to concepts of education, culture and identity.

Works by modern Italian artists such as Antonio Canova, Alberto Savinio and Giorgio de Chirico reveal how the creative dialogue between Greece and Italy continued into the 20th century. Duncan Howitt-Marshall

Blueprints for a New World

From Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Quadrilateral” to “Suprematist Cross” by his student Ilya Chashnik and El Lissitzky’s “Study for the Rosa Luxemburg Monument,” the Russian Avant-Garde emerges as a radical break from academic painting, traditional aesthetics and firm boundaries between art and life. Presented at the National Gallery 30 years after the Costakis Collection was first shown in Greece, “The Avant-Garde World: City, Nature, Universe, Human” revisits a movement that sought to reinvent the world from the ground up. Paintings, architectural studies, book covers, posters, theater sets, shop signs and workers’ uniforms reveal an ambition to extend art into every aspect of daily life. At the center of the story is George Costakis, the collector who assembled one of the most important collections of European modern art. Xenia Georgiadou

Pylos of Nestor

Presented in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Messenia, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the University of Cincinnati, the exhibition “Pylos of Nestor: A Mycenaean Kingdom Revealed” traces the formation of Messinia’s Mycenaean cultural identity from the 17th to the 14th century BC. Through 225 antiquities from 13 archaeological sites, the exhibition follows the transition from a world of powerful local chiefdoms to the emergence of a unified kingdom controlled from the palace at Ano Englianos, traditionally associated with the legendary figure of Nestor. Highlights include the spectacular finds from the undisturbed tomb of the Griffin Warrior, whose discovery in 2015 transformed our understanding of Mycenaean Messinia. Xenia Georgiadou

Contemporary Art, Ancient Views

Just steps from the bustle of Monastiraki’s flea market, antique shops, and Roman Agora, a light-filled gallery with views of the Acropolis and the Parthenon offers a welcome pause from the noise of the city. Set on the upper floor of a prewar building on Pandrossou Street, above the family-run Martinos Antique Shop – an Athens fixture since 1926 – Melas Martinos is one of the city’s most distinctive contemporary art spaces.

Run by collector and art advisor Andreas Melas, the gallery is worth seeking out not only for its exhibitions, but also for the way it brings together Athenian history, architecture and the international art scene. Through September 12, Melas Martinos presents “Neocolor,” an exhibition of works made by Swiss artist David Weiss in 1977 and 1978, before his internationally celebrated collaboration with Peter Fischli. Using Neocolor wax pastels and the grattage technique, Weiss created vivid images that emerge from dark surfaces, evoking the energy of Zurich’s artistic and musical counterculture in the late 1970s. Georgia Fekou

A Country Escape for Art Lovers, Just 30 Minutes from Athens

Even before visitors enter the Vorres Museum in Paiania, the garden wins them over. The small patches of greenery that once lay among the ruins of old houses in the traditional village of Paiania have today become a single, tranquil Mediterranean landscape, with cypress trees, pines, strawberry trees, rose bushes, salvias, ponds with water lilies, bamboo and shaded corners. The sustainable planting, of considerable botanical interest, is resilient and requires little water. Just half an hour from Athens via the Attiki Odos, the museum houses a distinctive collection that straddles the folk traditions of Greece and contemporary Greek art. Currently, the exhibition “Retrospectives: Selections from the Vorres Museum Collection,” curated by Evita Tsokanta featuring works by major Greek artists such as Alexis Akrithakis, Niki Kanagini and Jannis Kounellis, sheds light on lesser-known aspects of the collection. Nena Dimitriou

Kypseli After Sunset

In the 1950s and ’60s, Fokionos Negri was known as the “Via Veneto of Athens,” a fashionable promenade where the capital’s smart set came to see and be seen. Its old glamour may have faded over time, but in recent years this broad pedestrianized street in densely populated Kypseli has found a new rhythm. Cafés, bars and restaurants now share the scene with dog walkers, strolling families and children at play in a neighborhood abuzz with life.

Begin your walk just before sunset, taking in the striking mix of Art Deco, Bauhaus and modernist apartment buildings before stopping at ¡Topa!. Here, refreshing vermouths, served with an olive in the glass, and a wine list of nearly 100 labels accompany small plates inspired by the cuisines of Crete and northern Spain. A little farther down the street, Lisa serves sourdough pizzas with inventive toppings. End the evening with a screening at Cine Stella, the historic open-air cinema tucked away on Tenedou Street, just off Fokionos Negri. Georgia Papastamou

A New Table in Old Athens

In an area once defined by Athens’ traditional trades – doorknob shops, locksmiths, plumbing suppliers, dye works and tailors – a new generation of cafés, wine bars and restaurants has begun to change the rhythm of the neighborhood. At the entrance to historic Stoa Kairi, just steps from the Central Municipal Market, September 18 is a quietly stylish, all-day option in this old commercial pocket of the city.

Part Scandinavian in mood, part Mediterranean in spirit, it serves breakfast dishes such as a tender, buttery French omelets, poached eggs with hummus and za’atar, and yogurt with tahini, thyme honey and poached pear. Later in the day, stop by as much for the interesting crowd as for dinner, or simply settle in with a glass of wine, a cheese plate or one of the raw starters. Georgia Papastamou

In Motion

Urs Fischer’s new exhibition at Gagosian Athens, “Eugène Atget,” named after the pioneering French photographer, takes the contemporary city as its subject. Inspired by the urban landscape of Los Angeles, the Swiss artist combines silkscreen, painting, stencil and photography to create compositions in which text, portraits and images collide and overlap. Moving between representation and abstraction, the monumental works on display capture both the restless energy of city life and the visual overload of the contemporary world. Xenia Georgiadou

The Shape of Weightlessness

Devotees of collectible design should not leave Athens without discovering Astronauts, the creative studio of Danae Dasyra and Joe Bradford. Having studied three-dimensional design in England together, the duo now work from their Athens studio, experimenting with proportion, form and metal in ways that make the improbable feel possible, rather like astronauts themselves. Their signature technique is hydroforming, an industrial process that gives their pieces the soft, inflated look of colorful balloons. It is like blowing air into a balloon; only here, water is used to “inflate” metal and give it shape. The result is a series of three-dimensional metal objects and fully functional furniture, from tables and lamps to chairs that are unexpectedly comfortable, that seem to dissolve the hardness of the material into something fluid, organic and almost weightless. “What we do is redefine everyday objects by stimulating the imagination,” Dasyra and Bradford say. Although they are based in Athens, their work has appeared in design fairs and exhibitions elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. It has also been featured in Architectural Digest, and pieces of theirs will be displayed at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in October 2026. Georgia Fekou