Metaxourgeio: the silk-factory quarter
Galleries in neoclassical ruins, migrant food streets, and the square the artists took back. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Plateia Avdi
Start in the *plateia* (square) the neighbourhood built its comeback around — playground, benches, and the gallery walls that ring it. Sit for ten minutes and watch who the square belongs to: children, pensioners, art students, all at once.

2. Municipal Gallery of Athens (Pireos 51)
The city's gallery sits in a converted silk-spinning works on the square's edge. Free, rarely busy, strong on 20th-century Greek painting. Go in even if only to see the industrial bones the curators left exposed.

3. Kerameikos / Iera Odos street art
Walk the lanes south toward Iera Odos for the murals — Metaxourgeio is one of the city's densest street-art quarters and the walls change by the season. Don't plan a route; just turn down whichever alley looks freshly painted.

4. Megaron Kandili / the neoclassical ruins
Among the workshops stand the shells of grand neoclassical houses, half-restored, half-collapsed. This is the quarter's whole story in one street: ruin and revival sharing a wall. Photograph the facades while they're still in between.

5. Salaminos and the migrant food streets
The streets around Salaminos and Geraniou carry the kitchens of the people who actually live here — Pakistani, Bengali, Chinese, West African. Eat where the queue is, not where the English menu is. This is the most genuine meal on the walk.

6. Kerameikos station and the Gazi edge
End where Metaxourgeio bleeds into *Gazi*, the gasworks quarter, at the Kerameikos Metro 3 entrance. From here you can carry on to Technopolis, or take the train and leave the rest for another day.

Metaxourgeio: the silk-factory quarter