Best hotels in Athens for luxury beachside resorts and inner city boutiques

Independent

06-05-2025

With tons of exciting new projects in the pipeline, including the Athenian Riviera's ongoing revamp and the mega Ellinikon scheme, touted as 'Europe's greatest urban regeneration project', the city where democracy was invented back in 508 BC is currently having a 'moment'.
As once-grubby districts such as Piraeus and Psyrri buzz with innovative art galleries, cool new hotels, and gourmet food venues that are putting a spin on Greece's age-old cuisine, it's no surprise that this Parthenon-topped town described by Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte – co-founder of Beirut's contemporary design gallery – as 'the new Berlin', was crowned the globe's Leading Cultural City Destination in the 2024 World Travel Awards.
As a slew of exciting new hotels open their doors on the city's age-old streets, Athens certainly is an exciting place to be right now, which is why we've rounded up the best places to stay. Whether you want to be in walking distance to ancient ruins or would prefer a more modern, contemporary look on Greek life, we're sure we've found a hotel for everyone.
The best hotels in Athens 2025
1. Asomaton hotel
Asomaton might translate as 'incorporeal', but creature comforts are plentiful in this adults-only hotel, housed in a lovingly restored 19th-century building, which was once a repair shop for horse-drawn carriages. Looking out over Thissio's hilly streets – lined with Neoclassical houses, hip cafes and wine bars – the 19 cosy suites and lofts are decorated with dot-pop artwork and have bijou balconies. There's also a spectacularly pretty courtyard pool, perfect for chilling after a long day's sightseeing. You'll also find a rooftop restaurant where breakfast and dinner are dished up with stunning Acropolis views.
Address: Asomaton 10, 10553, Athens
Highlights: Acropolis views
2. Divani Apollon Palace & Thalasso hotel
If kicking back on a silk-sand beach after a long, hot day strolling storied streets appeals, this sumptuous spa hotel on Athens' swanky Riviera delivers in spades. Just a two-minute taxi ride from the city centre (or an hour's leisurely dawdle on an air-conditioned bus), this luxury hotel is decked out in classical style (think chandeliers, gleaming marble floors and solid-wood furnishings), has 280 rooms (most with sea views) and a state-of-the art thalassotherapy spa with large jet pool. The icing on the cake? There are several excellent restaurants serving everything from steaks and delicious seafood burgers to healthy detox menus.
Address: Agiou Nikolaou 10, Vouliagmeni 16671, Athens
Highlights: Beach hotel
3. St George Lycabettus hotel
With its leafy streets lined with hip designer stores, trendy bars and gourmet restaurants, Athens' Kolonaki district delivers a mega dose of romance. At the wildly beating heart of this elegant district – and just around the corner from the funicular that will whisk you on a scenic trip to the top of Mt Lycabettus' wooded slopes – is St George Lycabettus. The hotel's 16 stylish rooms and suites are decked out with plump Coco-Mat beds, blonde-wood furniture and funky artwork. Other loved-up accoutrements include a bijou cinema showing Hollywood classics, and a rooftop pool perfect for sunset sipping while dipping. Dyed-in-the-wool romantics should book the Panoramic Acropolis View Suite, a vast white-on-white haven with breathtaking views.
Address: Kleomenous 2, 10675, Athens
4. Hotel Grande Bretagne
Set in a Neoclassical building overlooking The Houses of Parliament – and the pom-pom-wearing presidential guards on Syntagma square – this ultra-luxurious hotel, which has just been awarded two Michelin keys, is loved by rockstar royalty and foreign dignitaries alike. Celebrating its 180th birthday this year, this grand dame has aged exceedingly well. All of its 320 rooms and suites combine elegant style (antique furnishings, dramatic velvet drapes and gleaming wooden floors) with lashings of very modern comforts, such as plump king-size beds and vast marble bathrooms. Elegant extras include the rooftop pool with uninterrupted views of Lycabettus' forested slopes, a rooftop restaurant with Acropolis views, and an award-winning destination spa, complete with a mud chamber and thermal steam room. Pick a room on the sixth or seventh floors and you'll even get 24-hour butler service.
5. The Foundry Suites hotel
Home of some of the city's best street art, gritty effervescent Psirri – where antique stores and souvlaki joints rub shoulders with indie boutiques, art galleries and hip cafes – is the perfect backdrop for this bougie hotel. Seamlessly combining industrial chic with urban style, 12 spacious high-ceiling apartments have antique fixtures and fittings – from wood-burning stoves and huge factory-like windows, with the original creaking mechanism that opens them – alongside modern extras, including fully equipped kitchens. The hotel is housed in an ancient foundry, which has an eco-friendly vertical garden façade. There's also a wonderful echo-filled wine cellar set within an ancient water reservoir, and a gloriously green jungle of rooftop garden with wraparound Acropolis views
Address: Sarri 40, 10553, Athens
Highlights: Best boutique hotel
6. Xenodocheio Milos hotel
Hailed as 'the man who pioneered the introduction of the Hellenic food scene in North America', chef Costas Spiliadis's latest hotel restaurant venture was designed by Divercity, the company responsible for the spectacular new W Algarve. Housed in a listed Neoclassical building dating from 1880 are 43 rooms and suites, all with soaring ceilings, marble fixtures, magnificent hand-crafted wooden furniture and minibars stocked with local goodies. Most guests flock here to dine in the ground-floor restaurant, with its sheer-white walls, elegant tables and open kitchen where Greece's most talented chefs prepare Spiliadis's inimitable gourmet take on traditional Greek cuisine.
Highlights: Best for foodies
7. Athens Flair hotel
Housed in a stunning neoclassical building built in 1906, this boutique beauty boasts original elements such as a Scarlet O'Hara-worthy marble staircase and intricately detailed plasterwork. Athens Flair has six vast suites opulently decked out with period-style furnishings and a delightfully private rooftop terrace with views to Lycabettus's pine-studded slopes.
Just around the corner from Kolonaki's high-end designer stores and chic cafes, this stylish hotel is an easy stroll from the city's mains sights. The Benaki museum and the plant-strewn National Gardens are five minutes' walk away, whilst half an hour's stroll will take you to Monastiraki's famed flea market and the not-to-be-missed Acropolis museum.
8. The Alex hotel
Once just the place where you went to catch a ferry to the islands, Piraeus is currently getting a facelift as countless art galleries, including Rodeo (sister to the Rodeo in Istanbul), move into the port's long-abandoned warehouses. You'll also find a string of hip hotels, cool bars and funky restaurants opening their doors in Piraeus's cobbled backstreets. Overlooking the buzzy port from a tree-shaded hilltop in Piraeus's Kastella district, The Alex is a design-led boutique hotel, just a five-minute stroll from Michelin-starred restaurant Varoulko in Mikrolimano port. The hotel offers a dozen comfortable rooms with good-sized beds, powerful rain showers and balconies (all tiny but some come with sea views). Best of all is The Alex's wooden-decked rooftop restaurant, where you can snack on Med-fusion food and watch the ferries pootling across the Saronic Gulf far below.
9. La Divina hotel
Not even the notoriously picky Maria Callas could find fault with this swanky sleep-stop carved out of a neoclassical building where the opera singer once performed (hence the hotel's name). Set along a pedestrian artery snaking between tat on Monastiraki's flea market and the temples of the city's ancient Agora, the hotel, which is well-situated for seeing the city's main sights, is also just a short stroll from a slew of cool cocktail bars and hip nightlife venues. With massive crystal chandelier dangling from lofty ceilings, white orchids in pots lining the lobby, and a circular staircase leading to 12 suites, including several with jetted tubs or balconies with breathtaking Acropolis views, drama is a constant leitmotif here. Leonidas choccies at turn down and a gourmet restaurant steps from The Agora are the icing on this operatic cake.
10. One&Only Aesthesis hotel
Greece's first outpost from the ultra luxurious One&Only hotel chain, this exclusive hideaway sprawled along a wooded stretch of blond sand-studded seaside near the ritzy designer stores and cocktail bars of Glyfada and within easy reach of the Acropolis and other city sights, manages to be select without being snobby. With decor evoking the legendary Asteria Beach Club that was once a magnet for the globe's celebrities there's a sense of age-old elegance. Unobtrusively superb service, and modern comforts ranging from spa and tennis courts, to a kids' club, several sparkling pools and spacious rooms and suites (some with private pools) ensure that this stylish resort is bang up to date.
11. Perianth Hotel
After decades of cruelly neglecting its glorious Art Deco buildings, Athens is increasingly investing in its more recent past. Housed in a beautifully refurbished 1930's building, Perianth is a case in point. Behind the classic exterior of this chic hotel a short walk from Monastiraki's bustling flea market and well-connected metro station, however, 38 rooms buzz with quirky detailing: there are colourful velvet sofas, walls lined with contemporary art work, standalone bath tubs, plants in light-filled bathrooms, glass brick separations and terraces with Acropolis views. And when the city's vim and vigour seems overwhelming, there's even a zen centre which provides a calming space, while also offering classes in everything from martial arts to meditation.
Address: 2, Limpona Street, 10560, Athens