“The Acropolis is the epicentre of the city; it’s the heartbeat,” Andria Mitsakos told me at her apartment the next day, the Parthenon visible from her dining room. “That’s why I live here. It’s a concentration of beauty and serenity that you don’t often get in a city centre, but it’s also residential, artistic, chaotic.” A Greek American who had visited once or twice as a child Mistakos came to Athens in 2013 to find manufacturers for the handbag line she was designing. She fell in love with the city and never left, becoming a Greek citizen and launching Anthologist, selling locally produced ceramics, jewellery, furniture and home accessories. There was a time when it would have been difficult for someone who didn’t speak the language to start a life in Athens, but the country is making it easier for entrepreneurs to do just that.
MeNational Bank of GreeceYiorgos Kordakis
In part, that’s through legal channels: digital nomad visas for foreigners who want to spend a year in Greece, investment visas for outsiders looking to open a business. There are also foreign investors drawn by prices reduced by the economic crisis and a growing community of artists, who appreciate the lower rent but also, perhaps, the fact that inspiration is everywhere; one only has to look up to see the street art, funded by private foundations and the city’s Public Murals Program. A giant tree built by the artist Stephan Goldrajch dominates the ground floor of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, or EMST. Inspired by the Arbre à Palabres, a meeting place where stories are shared in African villages, it is wrapped in crochet pieces and evil eye talismans knitted primarily by people in surrounding neighbourhoods.
The most profound innovation by the museum’s new director, Katerina Gregos, may be her insistence on paying artists. When she arrived, she says, three quarters of the museum’s collection, 96 per cent of which is work by Greek artists, were donations. It’s a move that signals a shift in attitudes towards home-grown talent – as are the residencies being offered by public and private institutions: the Onassis Stegi, the Neon Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Line bar and restaurantYiorgos Kordakis
Neon sign thereYiorgos Kordakis
Georgia Liapi, a curator at the Zoumboulakis Galleries and other artist-run spaces, traces the movement back to 2017, when Documenta, the German modern art festival held every five years, took place in Athens. “So many artists came then and stayed,” she says. They were drawn by the city’s relative affordability and also, she suspects, by “having access to all this light”.
Liapi worked in Canada and secured her residency there before returning to Athens. “In order to maintain my green card, I’ll have to go back soon,” she said as we sat in the café in the garden of the Numismatic Museum of Athens, a buttercup-yellow mansion that was once home to the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated Troy. “But it’s this moment, now, that I’m actually believing that things are happening in Athens.”
Original Travel offers five nights’ bed and breakfast at Xenodocheio Milos from £2,840 per person, including flights and transfers. It can also arrange Live Like a Local experiences created by a network of concierges in Athens.
