Kaisariani is the walk where Athens disappears. Twenty minutes from the centre, the suburb runs out and Mount Hymettus begins, and on its lower slope sits a Byzantine monastery in a pine forest replanted by hand after the war. The mountain has been sacred since antiquity — Hymettus honey, the spring of Aphrodite — and the moni simply inherited the holiness.
Start where the bus terminates and walk up the forest road; the gradient is steady and the silence arrives fast. The Kalopoula spring runs first, cold from a marble ram's head into its basin, the water the ancients thought cured barrenness. Then Moni Kaisarianis itself: an 11th-century domed church, the monks' cells and refectory around a walled court, the olive press and old bathhouse still standing. Go into the church for the frescoes and let your eyes adjust to the dark.
Climb the extra few minutes to the roofless Frangokklisia, then take any path into the Aisthitiko Dasos and loop back down through the pines. The walk ends where the trees open and the whole basin lies below — the Acropolis a pale speck, the sea behind it. Bus 224 back to the centre.
