The area: Pangrati is the quintessential middle-class neighbourhood with a definite artsy aura. The home address of musicians, writers, directors, academics, and journalists, past residents include composer Manos Hatzidakis and poet George Seferis. This makes for a lively café culture radiating from two hubs, Platia Proskopon and Platia Varnava. Shops, restaurants, small bars, and green spaces—plus a couple of galleries, an art house cinema, and a theatre—reflect the locals’ cosmopolitan outlook. Opened in October 2019, the Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art boosted the area’s profile among visitors, already drawn by the Kallimarmaro stadium and Athens First Cemetery. The artsy ambience is now complete with the reopening of the city’s flagship art repository, the National Gallery in early 2021. The unique vibe undulates between edginess and convention. This is one of the city’s most desirable neighbourhoods, and finding an apartment in the Pangrati or Mets areas has always been hard, as people move in but rarely move out. Though technically right in the city centre, the mood here is decidedly detached from it: Pangrati isn’t where change is sparked, but where it settles in.

Near the flat: Just 3 minutes on foot from the property you can find Platia Proskopon. Nowhere is ‘old’ Pangrati more visible than in Platia Proskopon, a pocket-sized, leafy quad closely bounded by buildings on two sides and a narrow street on the other. Cafés and restaurants crowd the space, with the spill-over snaking up Amynta and Archelaou Streets to form one nexus of Pangrati’s café scene. The confined space creates an intimacy that’s conducive to intense but leisurely conversation, as patrons pick over the latest political developments or new film over tsipouro and meze. It’s not unusual to spot politicians taking a breather at one of the tables and artists favoured the area long before Manos Hatzidakis made Magemenos Avlos, his favourite haunt.