The newly opened, Renzo Piano Workshop-designed Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre is now home to the Greek National Opera and the National Library. The cultural campus is a kind of privately-funded agora (public space). Take an afternoon to wander the roof garden and gallery, soaking in the 360-degree views, or explore the property by bike or via canoe on the adjacent waterway. The ambitious complex earned Greece’s first LEED platinum certification and boasts the world’s thinnest concrete roof (2 cm, or less than an inch), plus expanses of wood, marble, glass, and steel.

Athens’s Exarcheia neighborhood, known as a home for dissidents and anarchists, includes work by local architects Dimitris and Suzana Antonakakis. Built in 1973 to house the architects and three other families, the five-story concrete, stucco, and wood structure was created as a collective living space with discrete units. The building entryway is reached via an open stairway off a common courtyard. All of the apartments have street-side balconies, as well as ones overlooking an enclosed courtyard.

A collaboration between Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and Greece’s Michael Fotiadis, the New Acropolis Museum’s clean lines and airy spaces are inspired by ancient Greek mathematical principles, and were designed in response to the crumbling ruins near the building. Peruse the galleries and, from inside, take in impressive Acropolis views. Pro-tip: Go during the day for the air conditioning, and make your way up to the Acropolis an hour before closing to miss the heat, as the grounds are completely exposed (last entry is a half-hour before closing!).

This is perhaps the only chain hotel worth visiting in town—and not just because of its lovely pool and cafe. The 1963 building, designed by four Greek architects (Emmanuel Vourekas, Prokopis Vasileiadis, Anthony Georgiades and Spyro Staikos), includes original exterior relief work by artist Yiannis Moralis. The original lobby and public spaces are the work of the British architect and furniture designer T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings. The property also houses The Runner (1988), a whimsical, nearly-30-foot-tall sculpture by Costas Varotsos.

Greek classicism meets Bauhaus in the 1961 U.S. Embassy chancery building, designed by Walter Gropius in collaboration with local modernist architect Perikles Sakellarios. The main facade features Pentelic marble (also used for construction of the Parthenon), Peloponnesian black marble, and gray marble from Marathon. Gropius included a reflecting pool, both to create a sense of openness and to cool the incessant Greek sun. Olive trees, many of which have been there since 1960, surround the property and are harvested and pressed by embassy staff each November for limited-edition olive oil.

Ioannis Despotopoulos (also known as Jan Despo), conceived of this large-scale cultural plan commissioned by the government in 1959, but the Conservatoire was the only structure that was actually built. Despotopoulos is considered one of the most significant architects of the Greek modernist and Bauhaus movements, and when viewing the building and imagining it as part of a larger, never-realized complex, you can see why. The Athens Conservatoire was one of the main venues of the art fair documenta 14, which was held for the first time outside of Germany in 2017.

The National Observatory of Athens is a cool, dark, neo-classical building set up on the Hill of the Nymphs, one of the city’s seven main hills, just beyond the ancient agora. Designed in 1842 by Danish architect Theophilus Hansen, it was the first research institution established in Greece following the country’s liberation from Ottoman rule.

Hansen was also the mind behind two of the three buildings in Athens’s famed “classical trilogy”—The Academy of Athens and the National Library of Greece. The third is the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, designed by Hansen’s brother Christian. The Observatory is open evenings for viewing the night sky: Skip the expensive rooftop bars lining the street below and instead take in perfectly framed views of the Acropolis through the side gallery’s window.

The 11 BC Gate of Athena Archegetis, built with funds raised by Julius Caesar and Augustus, comprises four remaining Doric columns on a base of Pentelic marble, situated along the western edge of the Roman Agora. Ponder the remains of the former grand entryway to the marketplace while navigating through enthusiastic street vendors.

On one of the main roads from the center of Athens to the port (if you’re traveling on to Greek islands, you’ll become acquainted with this route), the mixed-use Trade and Shop building will stand out among the neighboring strip clubs, auto repair shops, and run-down cement apartment buildings. Designed by Maria Kokkinou and Andreas Kourkoulas as a headquarters for a clothing-import company, the building is meant to resemble pleated fabric. The area between structures is planted with grasses and irrigated—a rare green roof in Athens.

Expanded and renovated by Takis Zenetos in 1957, the old Fix Brewery building became the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2000, after years of bureaucratic delays. Zenetos created a glass facade along a horizontal axis, creating a landmark in an otherwise stale post-war cityscape. Fix Brewery moved their production out of Athens in the late ’70s, and part of the structure was demolished in the ’90s to build a nearby metro stop of the same name. The eight-story building includes three levels of the museum’s permanent collection, plus a top-level outdoor space and an eventual restaurant with Acropolis views.

Greek architect Takis Zenetos created the Circular School after a six-month survey of international education design. His circular scheme was meant to go against the long tradition of linear hallways in an effort to encourage a new style of learning. The building was completed in 1974, three years before his death.

Built in 330 BC for the Panathenaic Games on the site of a racetrack dating back to 566 BC, the Panathenaic Stadium was rebuilt in marble by Roman senator Herodes Atticus to accommodate crowds of up to 50,000. For the first modern Olympics, held in 1896, architect and Olympic shooter Anastasios Metaxas restored the stadium. The handover from Greece to each subsequent host nation of the Olympic flame still happens here.

The world’s only all-marble stadium is still used today for sporting events and concerts, and is open each morning to runners or athletic types who want to live out their Olympic fantasies. Bostonians will recognize the Panathenaic Stadium as the inspiration for the Harvard Stadium, built in 1903.

The Olympic Athletic Center of Athens was originally built in the 1980s, but was redesigned by Santiago Calatrava for the 2004 Olympics. The site has fallen into disrepair—trees and fountains have dried up, buildings are rusted and graffitied—and it isn’t fully maintained as a tourist site. But it’s still a classic example of a Calatrava design—and impressive in scale.

Tower of the Winds, a spectacularly conserved structure from 50 BC in the center of the Roman Agora, once had eight sundials, a weather vane, and water clock. Because of its height and prominent placement in the agora, it’s thought to be an early example of a clock tower. View the frieze that depicts the eight types of winds (which you’ll understand even more if you’ve been to the Greek islands in high summer) and their corresponding weather.

Architect and Olympian Anastasios Metaxas (who oversaw the renovation of the Panathenaic Stadium ahead of the first modern Olympics in 1896) also revamped the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture. The museum was founded in 1930 by Antonios Benakis in his family’s 1895 neoclassical villa, which Metaxas restored and expanded. In addition to an extensive collection of prehistoric and ancient Greek and Roman art, there are several complete 18th-century rooms displayed in their original states.

This classic restaurant, established in 1939, recently underwent a renovation by Athens-based k-studio to restore its former glory. The marble-and-terrazzo floor, pewter bar, bronze canopy, and modernist furniture all add to the goal of recreating the space’s chic, lounge-like vibe.

This 11th-century church sits just off the main shopping area on Ermou in the city’s Monastiraki neighborhood. The juxtaposition of a millennium-old structure in the shadow of a large H&M is a common one in this city. The Greek Orthodox church is built on the remains of an ancient pagan temple, likely from around 1050 AD, and is one of the oldest remaining churches in Athens. The church was damaged and abandoned during the Greek War of Independence and was nearly demolished in the mid-1800s. Don’t miss the 1936 Byzantine-style mosaic on the exterior, or the circa-1955 interior iconography by Photios Kontoglou.

Skip the touristy Monastiraki flea market stalls and instead walk from Monastiraki Square west along Ermou, which has antique shops selling ceramics, Byzantine icons, vintage books and photographs, and Greek vinyl, among myriad other treasures.