Plaka is the old town that wraps the northern foot of the Acropolis, and it has two faces: the neoclassical one of 19th-century Athens, and a stranger one higher up, where a piece of a Cycladic island was rebuilt on the rock. Walk it early, before the souvenir shutters roll up.
Start at the Lysicrates Monument, a small marble drum that won a 4th-century BC chorus its prize, then climb the lanes — pastel houses, marble doorways, the occasional cascade of bougainvillaea. The streets narrow and tilt until you reach Anafiotika, where masons from the island of Anafi, brought to build the new king's palace in the 1840s, built themselves whitewashed Cycladic houses to ease the homesickness. Blue doors, sleeping cats, no cars. The chapel of Agios Georgios tou Vrachou sits among them on the bare rock.
Come down to the Roman Agora and circle the octagonal Tower of the Winds, an ancient clock that still keeps the eight winds at its corners. End at the columns of Hadrian's Library, with Monastiraki and the metro a step beyond.
