Museums with kids go better when there's something for them to do or look for. This list covers the city's museums, from hands-on science and children's museums to collections of planes, ships, trains and toys, plus art and history museums for older kids. We use them for hot middays, wet afternoons and any day the playground has worn thin.
The Museum of Experiments is a hands-on science center where kids run physics, chemistry and biology experiments themselves, guided by a museum educator. Sunday workshops are grouped by age, from kitchen-cupboard chemistry for preschoolers and a parent to sessions on light and color for school-age kids.
There is also a science escape room, the Thomas Edison Edition, where older kids solve puzzles by completing experiments.
Planet Physics is an interactive science center built around physics. Its exhibition has around 30 hands-on exhibits, grouped into themed sections across more than 1,000 square meters, and some are found nowhere else in Southeastern Europe.
Specialized staff guide visitors through the exhibits, so kids learn by trying each one themselves. Schools and other groups can book educational programs pitched to their age and level.
The Hellenic Motor Museum fills the top three floors of the Athenian Capitol building with more than 110 cars from the 19th and 20th centuries, from veteran and vintage models to modern classics.
Kids can walk through an Old Car Workshop that ran from the 1930s to the 1960s, packed with over 3,000 period objects, and the museum also has a Formula 1 simulator.
Georgios Averof is an armored cruiser launched in Italy in 1910, and the only ship of its type still in existence. It led the Greek fleet in the First Balkan War and served through World War II.
Kids walk the open decks past the big gun turrets, then take steep stairways down below. The trireme Olympias, a reconstructed ancient Greek warship, docks nearby as part of the same museum.
The museum traces Greek seafaring from prehistoric times to today across more than 2,500 exhibits, from ship models and navigation instruments to naval paintings. One hall recreates a 19th-century boatyard showing how a wooden trechandiri was built.
Outside, kids can see the turret of the submarine Papanikolis and anchors from ships of the Battle of Navarino. Part of the ancient Konon walls sits at the entrance.
Run by retired staff of the Athens-Piraeus electric railway, this museum fills the old post office of Piraeus station, where Line 1 ends. The ground floor centers on an old wooden train carriage. Three more levels show objects from the stations, plus photographs and documents from the railway, the Piraeus-Perama light railway and the old harbor tramway.
The Zoological Museum belongs to the University of Athens biology department, and its collections date back to 1858. Across 2,200 m² it shows around 500 mammals as mounts or skeletons, including a tiger, about 2,500 birds covering every species found in Greece, plus nests and eggs, and around 1,000 reptiles, amphibians and fish. Dioramas recreate Greek and world habitats, with a focus on endangered Greek species.
The first museum in Greece devoted to jewelry, set in Ilias Lalaounis's former workshop building just below the Acropolis. The permanent displays draw on 50 collections he designed between 1957 and 2002, inspired by ancient Greek art, nature and children's designs, alongside two temporary exhibitions a year.
In the ZEM and ZEDET artists' studios, visitors can watch jewelers demonstrate ancient and modern metalsmithing techniques.
A national museum of Byzantine art in the Villa Ilissia, an 1848 mansion built for the Duchess of Plaisance. More than 25,000 objects span the 3rd century to the modern era: icons, frescoes, marble carvings, pottery, textiles and manuscripts, plus the wall paintings of a Byzantine church from Episkopi in Evrytania.
Free printed educational material for families waits at the gallery entrance, and the garden has a cafe.
The Athens Olympic Museum tells the story of the Games from ancient Olympia through the 1896 revival to Athens 2004, using videos, augmented-reality displays and hands-on interactive exhibits next to original objects such as Olympic torches.
A full section is given to the Paralympic Games and their athletes. The museum sits in the Golden Hall mall, linked by a footbridge to the Olympic Stadium (OAKA).
The Hellenic Air Force Museum on Dekelia Air Base restores and shows aircraft flown by the Greek air force. More than 40 planes and helicopters fill the main hangar and the grounds around it, so kids can get close to a Spitfire, a Tiger Moth, Starfighters and a Phantom.
Air force divers raised rare wartime wrecks from the sea for the collection, including a Junkers Ju 52.
A two-story 1840 mansion with an inner courtyard holds the largest collection of Greek folk instruments, from the mid-18th century on, gathered from the islands, the mainland, Constantinople, Pontus, Cappadocia and Cyprus. Drums and wind instruments fill the ground floor, string instruments the first floor, and bells and sound-making objects the basement.
An audio guide app covers the highlights, and summer brings concerts in the garden.
Greece's national art museum covers Greek and European art from the 14th to the 20th century. The focus is Greek painting from after the Byzantine era, hung alongside El Greco's The Concert of the Angels and works by Dürer, Rubens, Picasso and Rodin.
It suits kids old enough to enjoy an hour or two of looking at paintings. Toddlers who need to run will find little here.
The military museum of the Greek Armed Forces traces Greek history from antiquity to the present across four floors. Inside are ancient helmets, a Byzantine warship model, Greek Revolution weapons, army uniforms, and swords and armor from around the world, including a samurai suit.
Outside, the yard holds artillery guns from different eras and decommissioned Greek Air Force aircraft.
A museum of art made by children. Its collection holds more than 10,000 paintings and constructions by kids aged 4 to 14, from drawing competitions, donations and the museum's own workshops, and its exhibitions take on themes such as diversity and racism.
Kids come to make art themselves: workshops led by the museum's artists start from a famous painter, such as Degas or Kusama, and supply every material.
Part of the Benaki Museum, the Toy Museum is housed in the seaside Kouloura Mansion. It is built on Maria Argyriadi's collection of 20,000 vintage toys, games, children's books and clothes, one of the largest in Europe. Kids get to see what children played with and wore generations ago, and compare it with their own toy box.
The Spathario Museum is dedicated to Karagiozis, the quick-witted hero of Greek shadow puppet theater. Its rooms hold brightly painted puppet figures, stage sets and the story of the Spatharis family of puppeteers, in a neoclassical building owned by the Municipality of Maroussi.
The museum was founded with the puppeteer Evgenios Spatharis and runs guided tours and educational programs for children and adults.
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.
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.
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 permanent Natural History Exhibition runs through eight galleries: zoology, insects, reptiles, marine life, plants, birds, geology and fossils. The first botany halls were designed with support from the Natural History Museum in London.
At the GAIA Centre, "Climate Change and Us" is an interactive exhibition, and a digital dome screens animated films about dinosaurs, coral reefs and space. NATU Restaurant sits in the museum garden.
Hellenic Cosmos is the cultural center of the Foundation of the Hellenic World, set in an old industrial complex on Pireos Street. Its landmark is the Tholos, a domed virtual-reality theater with a 350 m² screen that takes audiences from Ancient Olympia and the Agora of Athens to outer space.
Kids can also try VR headsets, watch children's theater at the Theatron, see exhibitions and join weekend workshops.
The Eugenides Foundation's digital planetarium seats 278 under a 24.5-meter hemispherical dome, with full-dome shows on astronomy and other sciences.
Family titles include The Stellars, where three stranded aliens ask the audience to help save their rainforest, and The Enchanted Reef, about two fish on a mission to save a reef. The same building holds the Science and Technology Center, with interactive exhibits on physics, chemistry and robotics.
An interactive museum of optical illusions where visitors step into the exhibits and pose for photos that trick the eye. Kids cross the spinning Vortex Tunnel, test their balance in the Tilted Room, walk through the upside-down Reversed Room, and grow or shrink in the big and small room. Mirror rooms, hands-on installations and puzzle images fill the rest of the route.
The Children's Museum of Athens, run by the Hellenic Children's Museum, fills the ground floor of the Athens Conservatoire building with hands-on exhibits. Kids play in a biscuit-themed kitchen, play vet at the Pet Care Clinic, blow bubbles, try math games in Hello Pythagoras!, study maps and practice road safety. A separate playspace is set up for babies and toddlers, and kids can make things to take home.
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.
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.
Museums with kids go better when there's something for them to do or look for. This list covers the city's museums, from hands-on science and children's museums to collections of planes, ships, trains and toys, plus art and history museums for older kids. We use them for hot middays, wet afternoons and any day the playground has worn thin.
The Museum of Experiments is a hands-on science center where kids run physics, chemistry and biology experiments themselves, guided by a museum educator. Sunday workshops are grouped by age, from kitchen-cupboard chemistry for preschoolers and a parent to sessions on light and color for school-age kids.
There is also a science escape room, the Thomas Edison Edition, where older kids solve puzzles by completing experiments.
Planet Physics is an interactive science center built around physics. Its exhibition has around 30 hands-on exhibits, grouped into themed sections across more than 1,000 square meters, and some are found nowhere else in Southeastern Europe.
Specialized staff guide visitors through the exhibits, so kids learn by trying each one themselves. Schools and other groups can book educational programs pitched to their age and level.
The Hellenic Motor Museum fills the top three floors of the Athenian Capitol building with more than 110 cars from the 19th and 20th centuries, from veteran and vintage models to modern classics.
Kids can walk through an Old Car Workshop that ran from the 1930s to the 1960s, packed with over 3,000 period objects, and the museum also has a Formula 1 simulator.
Georgios Averof is an armored cruiser launched in Italy in 1910, and the only ship of its type still in existence. It led the Greek fleet in the First Balkan War and served through World War II.
Kids walk the open decks past the big gun turrets, then take steep stairways down below. The trireme Olympias, a reconstructed ancient Greek warship, docks nearby as part of the same museum.
The museum traces Greek seafaring from prehistoric times to today across more than 2,500 exhibits, from ship models and navigation instruments to naval paintings. One hall recreates a 19th-century boatyard showing how a wooden trechandiri was built.
Outside, kids can see the turret of the submarine Papanikolis and anchors from ships of the Battle of Navarino. Part of the ancient Konon walls sits at the entrance.
Run by retired staff of the Athens-Piraeus electric railway, this museum fills the old post office of Piraeus station, where Line 1 ends. The ground floor centers on an old wooden train carriage. Three more levels show objects from the stations, plus photographs and documents from the railway, the Piraeus-Perama light railway and the old harbor tramway.
The Zoological Museum belongs to the University of Athens biology department, and its collections date back to 1858. Across 2,200 m² it shows around 500 mammals as mounts or skeletons, including a tiger, about 2,500 birds covering every species found in Greece, plus nests and eggs, and around 1,000 reptiles, amphibians and fish. Dioramas recreate Greek and world habitats, with a focus on endangered Greek species.
The first museum in Greece devoted to jewelry, set in Ilias Lalaounis's former workshop building just below the Acropolis. The permanent displays draw on 50 collections he designed between 1957 and 2002, inspired by ancient Greek art, nature and children's designs, alongside two temporary exhibitions a year.
In the ZEM and ZEDET artists' studios, visitors can watch jewelers demonstrate ancient and modern metalsmithing techniques.
A national museum of Byzantine art in the Villa Ilissia, an 1848 mansion built for the Duchess of Plaisance. More than 25,000 objects span the 3rd century to the modern era: icons, frescoes, marble carvings, pottery, textiles and manuscripts, plus the wall paintings of a Byzantine church from Episkopi in Evrytania.
Free printed educational material for families waits at the gallery entrance, and the garden has a cafe.
The Athens Olympic Museum tells the story of the Games from ancient Olympia through the 1896 revival to Athens 2004, using videos, augmented-reality displays and hands-on interactive exhibits next to original objects such as Olympic torches.
A full section is given to the Paralympic Games and their athletes. The museum sits in the Golden Hall mall, linked by a footbridge to the Olympic Stadium (OAKA).
The Hellenic Air Force Museum on Dekelia Air Base restores and shows aircraft flown by the Greek air force. More than 40 planes and helicopters fill the main hangar and the grounds around it, so kids can get close to a Spitfire, a Tiger Moth, Starfighters and a Phantom.
Air force divers raised rare wartime wrecks from the sea for the collection, including a Junkers Ju 52.
A two-story 1840 mansion with an inner courtyard holds the largest collection of Greek folk instruments, from the mid-18th century on, gathered from the islands, the mainland, Constantinople, Pontus, Cappadocia and Cyprus. Drums and wind instruments fill the ground floor, string instruments the first floor, and bells and sound-making objects the basement.
An audio guide app covers the highlights, and summer brings concerts in the garden.
Greece's national art museum covers Greek and European art from the 14th to the 20th century. The focus is Greek painting from after the Byzantine era, hung alongside El Greco's The Concert of the Angels and works by Dürer, Rubens, Picasso and Rodin.
It suits kids old enough to enjoy an hour or two of looking at paintings. Toddlers who need to run will find little here.
The military museum of the Greek Armed Forces traces Greek history from antiquity to the present across four floors. Inside are ancient helmets, a Byzantine warship model, Greek Revolution weapons, army uniforms, and swords and armor from around the world, including a samurai suit.
Outside, the yard holds artillery guns from different eras and decommissioned Greek Air Force aircraft.
A museum of art made by children. Its collection holds more than 10,000 paintings and constructions by kids aged 4 to 14, from drawing competitions, donations and the museum's own workshops, and its exhibitions take on themes such as diversity and racism.
Kids come to make art themselves: workshops led by the museum's artists start from a famous painter, such as Degas or Kusama, and supply every material.
Part of the Benaki Museum, the Toy Museum is housed in the seaside Kouloura Mansion. It is built on Maria Argyriadi's collection of 20,000 vintage toys, games, children's books and clothes, one of the largest in Europe. Kids get to see what children played with and wore generations ago, and compare it with their own toy box.
The Spathario Museum is dedicated to Karagiozis, the quick-witted hero of Greek shadow puppet theater. Its rooms hold brightly painted puppet figures, stage sets and the story of the Spatharis family of puppeteers, in a neoclassical building owned by the Municipality of Maroussi.
The museum was founded with the puppeteer Evgenios Spatharis and runs guided tours and educational programs for children and adults.
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.
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.
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 permanent Natural History Exhibition runs through eight galleries: zoology, insects, reptiles, marine life, plants, birds, geology and fossils. The first botany halls were designed with support from the Natural History Museum in London.
At the GAIA Centre, "Climate Change and Us" is an interactive exhibition, and a digital dome screens animated films about dinosaurs, coral reefs and space. NATU Restaurant sits in the museum garden.
Hellenic Cosmos is the cultural center of the Foundation of the Hellenic World, set in an old industrial complex on Pireos Street. Its landmark is the Tholos, a domed virtual-reality theater with a 350 m² screen that takes audiences from Ancient Olympia and the Agora of Athens to outer space.
Kids can also try VR headsets, watch children's theater at the Theatron, see exhibitions and join weekend workshops.
The Eugenides Foundation's digital planetarium seats 278 under a 24.5-meter hemispherical dome, with full-dome shows on astronomy and other sciences.
Family titles include The Stellars, where three stranded aliens ask the audience to help save their rainforest, and The Enchanted Reef, about two fish on a mission to save a reef. The same building holds the Science and Technology Center, with interactive exhibits on physics, chemistry and robotics.
An interactive museum of optical illusions where visitors step into the exhibits and pose for photos that trick the eye. Kids cross the spinning Vortex Tunnel, test their balance in the Tilted Room, walk through the upside-down Reversed Room, and grow or shrink in the big and small room. Mirror rooms, hands-on installations and puzzle images fill the rest of the route.
The Children's Museum of Athens, run by the Hellenic Children's Museum, fills the ground floor of the Athens Conservatoire building with hands-on exhibits. Kids play in a biscuit-themed kitchen, play vet at the Pet Care Clinic, blow bubbles, try math games in Hello Pythagoras!, study maps and practice road safety. A separate playspace is set up for babies and toddlers, and kids can make things to take home.
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.
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.
