Kolonaki and Lycabettus

The name means "little column", after an ancient column about two metres tall that marked the spot before the area was built up and that now stands in the square (officially Filikis Etairias Square). Under Ottoman rule these slopes were empty and known as Katsikadika, as milkmen grazed their goats on them, and the first houses went up in the middle of the nineteenth century, when proximity to the royal palace (today the Hellenic Parliament) seems to have made this an address worth having.

Most of the building, nevertheless, came after 1890, and an admiral who moved here with his family at fourteen, in 1894, recalled that it was thought the healthiest and most aristocratic district in town. Kolonaki was also one of the first parts of Athens to take up the apartment building (the polykatoikia), in the interwar years for the Athenian elite and then, from the 1950s, as in the rest of the city, mostly through antiparochi (the owner of a plot hands it to a builder in return for some of the flats). Many of the post-war blocks here were designed by architects favoured by the upper-middle class, Emmanouil Vourekas and Konstantinos Kapsampelis among them, whereas several interwar apartment buildings still stand on Patriarchou Ioakeim Street.

Kolonaki Square is busy all day, and This is Athens (the official visitors' guide of the City of Athens) writes of countless cafés, designer shops and, as a matter of course, bitter orange trees. Skoufa and Navarinou are one street under two names, climbing gently from Exarcheia to Kolonaki Square, and an essay in Athens Voice describes the Skoufa stretch as one of neoclassical houses, 1960s apartment buildings, tall trees and tables set out on the pavements. Voukourestiou, named after the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913, runs up from Stadiou Street to the slope of Lycabettus. It became the street for imported goods and jewellers in the 1950s and is still known for high-end boutiques. The Zoumboulakis Galleries, among the oldest in Athens, opened on Kriezotou Street in 1966 and on the square in 1973.

The Benaki Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Byzantine and Christian Museum, the War Museum and the National Gallery all stand on Vasilissis Sofias and Vasileos Konstantinou avenues or just off them. The Benaki, founded in 1930 by Antonis Benakis, is housed in his family's mansion opposite the National Garden and covers Greek art from prehistory to modern times. The Cycladic museum was set up in 1986 to house the collection of Nikolaos and Dolly Goulandris, and in 1991 it was given the Stathatos Mansion (designed by Ernst Ziller and built in 1895). The Byzantine and Christian Museum, founded in 1914, moved in 1930 into the Villa Ilissia, a house that Stamatis Kleanthis built between 1840 and 1848 for the Duchess of Plaisance.

Several embassies are here too, the British and the German among them, and the British ambassador lives in the house built in 1932 for Eleftherios Venizelos, which became part of the British mission in 1936.

Lycabettus, a hill of Cretaceous limestone that Athena, according to the myth, dropped while carrying it to the Acropolis, rises to 277 metres (the highest point in central Athens), with pines around its base and a chapel of St George at the top. The funicular leaves from Aristippou Street in Kolonaki and has covered its 210 metres, entirely in a tunnel, since 18 April 1965.

The open-air theatre near the summit, designed by Takis Zenetos, reopened on 15 September 2023 after some 15 years, restored by the Municipality of Athens to his original design (a report of April 2023 gave it 3850 seats). Lower down, Dexameni Square takes its name from the reservoir (dexameni) at the end of the Hadrianic aqueduct, which began operating in AD 140, bringing water some 20 km from springs on Mount Parnitha, and whose water is managed today by EYDAP (the Athens water company).

Three metro stations serve the quarter, Evangelismos on Vasilissis Sofias (on Line 3 since 28 January 2000), Syntagma, where Lines 2 and 3 meet the tram, and Panepistimio on Line 2. Some Line 3 trains run on to the airport, and by road Vasilissis Sofias, along the southern edge of the quarter, is part of the national road to Rafina.

The new Line 4 will add a station under the square, where work began in April 2023 (Athens Voice, October 2024), and an interchange with Line 3 at Evangelismos. CNN Greece reported in April 2026 that the contract sets the end of 2029 for completing the works, unless unforeseen difficulties arise, and that a legal challenge over Rizari park at Evangelismos was still open, so dates on a project of this size may well move.

Kolonaki is a neighbourhood of the Municipality of Athens and is reckoned one of its most expensive. This is Athens says that the quarter is home to the old Athenian bourgeoisie, the art crowd, coffee lovers and shoppers, that many townhouses have passed down through families, and that other Athenians see its elderly residents (the Kolonakiotes) as something close to royalty.

In Greca House's research snapshot of 1 October 2026, Kolonaki and Lycabettus had the highest median asking price per m² of the Athens neighbourhoods it reports on (the figure is given below), while the median across all 197 apartments in its Athens-area sample was 3667 euro per m².

The rough edges are mostly practical: the square has been a building site since April 2023 and may well remain one for some time (the official guide calls the excavation colossal), and the upper streets climb the slope of the hill, some of them as stairs. As for the nightlife, many Athenians still rate Kolonaki first in the centre, although, the same guide says, it bears little resemblance to the crowds and nightclubs of the 1990s.