Kids can run the 1896 Olympic track, walk under the Parthenon's columns and see a working model of a 2,000-year-old Greek computer. We picked the ruins and museums that hold a kid's attention, including two small museums built around ancient machines and a couple of sites worth the drive out of the city. Here's what we checked, from the Acropolis to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio.
A hands-on workshop at Tetragono art space in Agia Paraskevi where kids build a Mycenaean megaron, the palace hall of ancient Mycenae.
It suits school-age kids who are curious about ancient Greece and like making things with their hands more than listening to a talk.
A flat-topped rock 150 m above sea level, crowned by temples built in the fifth century BC: the Parthenon, the Propylaea gateway, the Erechtheion and the small Temple of Athena Nike. Kids can spot the Erechtheion porch held up by stone women (the caryatids), and the ancient Theatre of Dionysus sits on the south slope.
Suits school-age kids who know a few Greek myths more than toddlers.
The Acropolis Museum holds the sculptures and objects found on the Acropolis rock and its slopes. Glass floors look down onto the excavated remains of an ancient neighborhood, which you can also walk through from the courtyard.
Inside are the original Caryatids from the Erechtheion and Archaic statues with traces of their paint. The top-floor Parthenon Gallery spaces its columns like the temple's, with glass walls facing the Acropolis.
The Ancient Agora was the marketplace and meeting ground of ancient Athens, on the slope below the Acropolis. Paths lead past the Temple of Hephaestus, the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles and the remains of law courts and shops, under oak and laurel trees planted since 1954.
The rebuilt Stoa of Attalos holds the site museum, where exhibits show how Athenian democracy worked.
Greece's largest archaeology museum holds more than 20,000 objects, spanning Greek history from prehistory to late antiquity. Kids tend to make for the Mycenaean gold, including the mask once wrongly named for Agamemnon, the Artemision Bronze, Egyptian mummies, Bronze Age wall paintings from Akrotiri on Santorini, and the Antikythera mechanism.
Out front, a garden lined with sculptures has a café.
More than 100 working reconstructions of ancient Greek inventions fill this museum, from Philo's robot maid and early automata to the Antikythera Mechanism, early cinema devices and telecommunication systems. Each model is built from ancient texts and archaeological evidence.
A separate exhibition holds 45 reconstructed ancient instruments and toys, with live demonstrations of how they were played. It suits school-age kids who like gadgets and how things work.
A science and technology museum in a restored neoclassical house in Thissio. The permanent EUREKA exhibition shows working models of ancient Greek inventions: a mechanical maidservant that pours wine into a guest's cup, Heron's temple doors that open when a fire is lit on the altar, and a large see-through model of the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,000-year-old analog computer that predicted eclipses. Best for curious school-age kids.
The Panathenaic Stadium, known locally as Kallimarmaro (beautiful marble), is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble. It hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896 and is still the finish line of the Athens Marathon.
Kids can run onto the track, climb the marble stands, pose on the podium, walk the vaulted passage, and see Olympic torches and posters from 1896 to today in the museum.
The Roman Agora is the ruined market square Augustus paid for around 2,000 years ago, north of the Acropolis. Kids enter through the Gate of Athena Archegetis, a Doric marble gateway, and cross to the Tower of the Winds.
The octagonal tower stands 12 meters tall with a carved wind god on each side and eight sundials. It once held a water clock, and Roman public latrines stood beside it.
Emperor Hadrian built this library in AD 132: a walled rectangle with a Corinthian gateway on its west side, a courtyard ringed by columns, and reading and lecture halls.
The courtyard also holds the remains of churches later built on the ruins, including a 5th-century church with four apses. A marked path of beaten earth, suited to wheelchairs and strollers, runs in from the Dexippos Street entrance.
Kerameikos was the potters' quarter and a major cemetery of ancient Athens, and the English word "ceramic" comes from its name. Paths run past grave monuments on the Street of Tombs, the remains of the Dipylon and Sacred Gates, and the Eridanos stream, where some water still flows.
A small museum holds the original grave sculptures and burial finds, from marble stelae to jewelry and toys.
The museum holds Cycladic figurines, ancient Greek and Cypriot art, and a gallery on daily life in antiquity, spread over two buildings joined by a corridor.
Families can rent the Family Kit at the entrance: a box of maps, exhibit copies, story cards and an augmented reality app that puts kids in photos with the largest figurine. Weekend workshops run by age group, from toddlers with a parent to 12-year-olds.
The Temple of Poseidon stands on the headland at Cape Sounion, almost 60 meters above the sea, which surrounds it on three sides. Built around 444 to 440 BC, it still has 15 of its original 34 Doric marble columns standing.
Kids can hunt for the name of Lord Byron carved into the base of one column, then find the ruins of the Temple of Athena close by.
The Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron is where young Athenian girls once served the goddess as "she-bears", dancing and running races in saffron robes.
Kids can walk the restored Doric stoa, peek into its dining rooms with stone tables and cuttings for couch legs, and cross the only known Classical stone bridge in Greece, with cart wheel ruts still worn into its slabs.
Kids can run the 1896 Olympic track, walk under the Parthenon's columns and see a working model of a 2,000-year-old Greek computer. We picked the ruins and museums that hold a kid's attention, including two small museums built around ancient machines and a couple of sites worth the drive out of the city. Here's what we checked, from the Acropolis to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio.
A hands-on workshop at Tetragono art space in Agia Paraskevi where kids build a Mycenaean megaron, the palace hall of ancient Mycenae.
It suits school-age kids who are curious about ancient Greece and like making things with their hands more than listening to a talk.
A flat-topped rock 150 m above sea level, crowned by temples built in the fifth century BC: the Parthenon, the Propylaea gateway, the Erechtheion and the small Temple of Athena Nike. Kids can spot the Erechtheion porch held up by stone women (the caryatids), and the ancient Theatre of Dionysus sits on the south slope.
Suits school-age kids who know a few Greek myths more than toddlers.
The Acropolis Museum holds the sculptures and objects found on the Acropolis rock and its slopes. Glass floors look down onto the excavated remains of an ancient neighborhood, which you can also walk through from the courtyard.
Inside are the original Caryatids from the Erechtheion and Archaic statues with traces of their paint. The top-floor Parthenon Gallery spaces its columns like the temple's, with glass walls facing the Acropolis.
The Ancient Agora was the marketplace and meeting ground of ancient Athens, on the slope below the Acropolis. Paths lead past the Temple of Hephaestus, the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles and the remains of law courts and shops, under oak and laurel trees planted since 1954.
The rebuilt Stoa of Attalos holds the site museum, where exhibits show how Athenian democracy worked.
Greece's largest archaeology museum holds more than 20,000 objects, spanning Greek history from prehistory to late antiquity. Kids tend to make for the Mycenaean gold, including the mask once wrongly named for Agamemnon, the Artemision Bronze, Egyptian mummies, Bronze Age wall paintings from Akrotiri on Santorini, and the Antikythera mechanism.
Out front, a garden lined with sculptures has a café.
More than 100 working reconstructions of ancient Greek inventions fill this museum, from Philo's robot maid and early automata to the Antikythera Mechanism, early cinema devices and telecommunication systems. Each model is built from ancient texts and archaeological evidence.
A separate exhibition holds 45 reconstructed ancient instruments and toys, with live demonstrations of how they were played. It suits school-age kids who like gadgets and how things work.
A science and technology museum in a restored neoclassical house in Thissio. The permanent EUREKA exhibition shows working models of ancient Greek inventions: a mechanical maidservant that pours wine into a guest's cup, Heron's temple doors that open when a fire is lit on the altar, and a large see-through model of the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,000-year-old analog computer that predicted eclipses. Best for curious school-age kids.
The Panathenaic Stadium, known locally as Kallimarmaro (beautiful marble), is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble. It hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896 and is still the finish line of the Athens Marathon.
Kids can run onto the track, climb the marble stands, pose on the podium, walk the vaulted passage, and see Olympic torches and posters from 1896 to today in the museum.
The Roman Agora is the ruined market square Augustus paid for around 2,000 years ago, north of the Acropolis. Kids enter through the Gate of Athena Archegetis, a Doric marble gateway, and cross to the Tower of the Winds.
The octagonal tower stands 12 meters tall with a carved wind god on each side and eight sundials. It once held a water clock, and Roman public latrines stood beside it.
Emperor Hadrian built this library in AD 132: a walled rectangle with a Corinthian gateway on its west side, a courtyard ringed by columns, and reading and lecture halls.
The courtyard also holds the remains of churches later built on the ruins, including a 5th-century church with four apses. A marked path of beaten earth, suited to wheelchairs and strollers, runs in from the Dexippos Street entrance.
Kerameikos was the potters' quarter and a major cemetery of ancient Athens, and the English word "ceramic" comes from its name. Paths run past grave monuments on the Street of Tombs, the remains of the Dipylon and Sacred Gates, and the Eridanos stream, where some water still flows.
A small museum holds the original grave sculptures and burial finds, from marble stelae to jewelry and toys.
The museum holds Cycladic figurines, ancient Greek and Cypriot art, and a gallery on daily life in antiquity, spread over two buildings joined by a corridor.
Families can rent the Family Kit at the entrance: a box of maps, exhibit copies, story cards and an augmented reality app that puts kids in photos with the largest figurine. Weekend workshops run by age group, from toddlers with a parent to 12-year-olds.
The Temple of Poseidon stands on the headland at Cape Sounion, almost 60 meters above the sea, which surrounds it on three sides. Built around 444 to 440 BC, it still has 15 of its original 34 Doric marble columns standing.
Kids can hunt for the name of Lord Byron carved into the base of one column, then find the ruins of the Temple of Athena close by.
The Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron is where young Athenian girls once served the goddess as "she-bears", dancing and running races in saffron robes.
Kids can walk the restored Doric stoa, peek into its dining rooms with stone tables and cuttings for couch legs, and cross the only known Classical stone bridge in Greece, with cart wheel ruts still worn into its slabs.
