Panepistimiou is where modern Athens decided what it wanted to look like. When the new kingdom needed a capital in the 1830s and 40s, it called in Danish and German architects and built a neoclassical spine of marble down a single boulevard — and at its centre stands the Athenian Trilogy, three buildings that are still the city's purest statement of itself.
Start at Syntagma and walk up the north side. The Academy of Athens comes first and hardest to ignore — Theophil Hansen's temple with Athena and Apollo aloft, the pediment painted in the colours the ancients really used. Next the University, calmer, its portico frescoed with the arts reborn. Then the National Library behind its curving double stair, a Doric shell now that the books have gone to the coast.
That's the Trilogy. But the walk is also the street around it: cut to Plateia Korai and into the stoes, the covered arcades full of old shops and the last downtown cinemas — cool, dim, full of small finds. End at Plateia Klafthmonos, the 'square of weeping', and drop into the Panepistimio metro. Works in rain; most of the second half is covered.
