Teenagers want plans that feel like their own, not a playground with a younger sibling. This list is for kids 13 and up: go-karting, bowling and climbing walls for burning off energy, open-air cinemas for summer nights, and the museums, ancient sites and day trips that land better once they're old enough to care about the story behind them.
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.
Speed Park is an outdoor kart track in Aspropyrgos, west of Athens, built in 1986 on a technical, demanding layout. Rental karts range from a mini electric kart and a junior kart up to faster 270cc models, plus a two-seater. After each session, drivers collect a printed lap-timing sheet.
The track also runs a kart academy for beginners and hosts birthday parties and timed races.
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.
The ruins of one of the largest temples of the ancient world, begun around 515 BC and finished by the Roman emperor Hadrian more than 600 years later. Of its 104 marble columns, 15 still stand, each almost 17 meters tall. A 16th lies on the ground where a storm brought it down in 1852.
The site sits between the Acropolis and Ardittos Hill, by the old Ilissos riverbed.
Cine Paris is an open-air cinema on a rooftop garden in Plaka, with the Acropolis in view beyond the screen. It opened in the 1920s, moved into this Kydathineon Street building in the early 1960s, and is one of the oldest open-air cinemas in Greece.
The Greek film platform Cinobo picks the films, and the terrace has its own bar.
Bowling Center Ilion is a 2,000 m² indoor games hall built around 12 bowling lanes. Billiards tables and virtual reality games share the same floor, so kids who tire of bowling have somewhere to go next. It suits school-age kids and teens more than toddlers.
Cine Thisio is an open-air cinema on Apostolou Pavlou street, with rows of seats facing a big screen and the floodlit Acropolis in view above it. Families come for an evening film under the sky, where the setting is half the show. It suits kids old enough to sit through a late film outdoors.
The Hellenic Riding Club is where organized riding began in Greece. Army officers and amateur riders founded it just before World War II, and after the war it moved to its grounds in Paradisos, which became the country's first major center for competitive riding.
Today it runs a riding school alongside the sand arenas where its show-jumping competitions take place.
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 Wall is a sport climbing park in Pallini, set on about 4,000 square meters. Its main outdoor wall stands 14 meters high, with room for 30 climbers on ropes at the same time, and a separate bouldering area has short routes climbed without ropes. A café, changing rooms and a shop for climbing and outdoor gear sit beside the walls.
RockWay is an indoor climbing center with 300 square meters of walls set with overhangs, roofs, slabs and corners, for both roped climbing and bouldering.
The kids' program takes children through to their teens, with instructors turning climbing into games for first-timers and steady training for keen ones. There is also a competition team, and the gym runs one-day climbing trips to crags around Attica.
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.
Teenagers want plans that feel like their own, not a playground with a younger sibling. This list is for kids 13 and up: go-karting, bowling and climbing walls for burning off energy, open-air cinemas for summer nights, and the museums, ancient sites and day trips that land better once they're old enough to care about the story behind them.
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.
Speed Park is an outdoor kart track in Aspropyrgos, west of Athens, built in 1986 on a technical, demanding layout. Rental karts range from a mini electric kart and a junior kart up to faster 270cc models, plus a two-seater. After each session, drivers collect a printed lap-timing sheet.
The track also runs a kart academy for beginners and hosts birthday parties and timed races.
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.
The ruins of one of the largest temples of the ancient world, begun around 515 BC and finished by the Roman emperor Hadrian more than 600 years later. Of its 104 marble columns, 15 still stand, each almost 17 meters tall. A 16th lies on the ground where a storm brought it down in 1852.
The site sits between the Acropolis and Ardittos Hill, by the old Ilissos riverbed.
Cine Paris is an open-air cinema on a rooftop garden in Plaka, with the Acropolis in view beyond the screen. It opened in the 1920s, moved into this Kydathineon Street building in the early 1960s, and is one of the oldest open-air cinemas in Greece.
The Greek film platform Cinobo picks the films, and the terrace has its own bar.
Bowling Center Ilion is a 2,000 m² indoor games hall built around 12 bowling lanes. Billiards tables and virtual reality games share the same floor, so kids who tire of bowling have somewhere to go next. It suits school-age kids and teens more than toddlers.
Cine Thisio is an open-air cinema on Apostolou Pavlou street, with rows of seats facing a big screen and the floodlit Acropolis in view above it. Families come for an evening film under the sky, where the setting is half the show. It suits kids old enough to sit through a late film outdoors.
The Hellenic Riding Club is where organized riding began in Greece. Army officers and amateur riders founded it just before World War II, and after the war it moved to its grounds in Paradisos, which became the country's first major center for competitive riding.
Today it runs a riding school alongside the sand arenas where its show-jumping competitions take place.
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 Wall is a sport climbing park in Pallini, set on about 4,000 square meters. Its main outdoor wall stands 14 meters high, with room for 30 climbers on ropes at the same time, and a separate bouldering area has short routes climbed without ropes. A café, changing rooms and a shop for climbing and outdoor gear sit beside the walls.
RockWay is an indoor climbing center with 300 square meters of walls set with overhangs, roofs, slabs and corners, for both roped climbing and bouldering.
The kids' program takes children through to their teens, with instructors turning climbing into games for first-timers and steady training for keen ones. There is also a competition team, and the gym runs one-day climbing trips to crags around Attica.
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.
