Tip of the day – Discover Mets, the bohemian neighrborhood of Athens

• February 15, 2022

Mets, one of the oldest and most bohemian neighborhoods of Athens, remains a hidden gem that has preserved its authenticity—far from the bustling streets of the city center. It’s home to the First Cemetery of Athens, often called an open-air sculpture museum, where you can admire remarkable masterpieces of Greek sculpture. This vintage and timeless area has a rich artistic history, with many films set here and numerous artists and directors calling it home—earning it the nickname in the Greek and international blog posts of travel experts, “the Montmartre of Athens.”

Start your walk from the First Cemetery and wander through the charming, narrow streets, where the architecture of old Athens still stands, offering a glimpse into a bygone era.

And if the name of the are sounds to you strange here is the story you want to hear:

The history of the neighborhood begins in 1872, when the Bavarian Johannes Fuchs (son of Johan Fuchs, founder of the Fix brewery) decided to open his first beer garden on the slopes of Ardittos Hill. At the time, all that was there was the cemetery, which was located there to take advantage of the gentle breeze, and Giorgis Argyriou’s flour mill (an 18th-century building that was sadly demolished in 1986), where Athenians came to mill their wheat. Soon, families moving to the city from the island of Tzia (or Kea) begin to build homes around the beer garden, gradually creating a small neighborhood of modest houses and neoclassical mansions.

The first name given to the area was “Pantremenadika” (“Where the married men go”), which referred to certain wood huts built there in the early 20th century, said to be used for illicit trysts. The name by which it has come to be known, however, was the one chosen by Fuchs himself to commemorate the last battle in the Franco-Prussian war, which took place in 1871 near the French town of Metz (transliterated into Greek as “Mets”).

To have your lunch or dinner, or enjoy just a beer to rest one after exploring the area, choose one of the plenty of restaurants around, mainly in Anapafseos  street:  Colibri is one of our favorites, Huaca Nikkei Resto Bar is suggested from TripAdvisor if you like Peruvian food, and there are many many others waiting for you to discover them. Half Note, one of the oldest and most famous jazz bars in Athens, is  also located here.