Greece

Greece stretches from the Balkan mainland into the Aegean and Ionian seas, with more than two hundred inhabited islands scattered off its coast. Athens concentrates around a third of the country’s population under the Acropolis, Thessaloniki anchors the north, and the Dodecanese islands, with Rhodes at their head, lie far to the southeast within sight of the Turkish coast. Everything in this guide comes from three trips: a winter week in Athens, a stay in Thessaloniki, and an island-hopping drive across Rhodes.

Athens

The Acropolis was the first thing that greeted us in Athens, and it kept doing so for the rest of the week: the rock rises about 150 metres and is visible from almost every corner of the city. Athens has a recorded history of over 3,500 years, and the ancient city keeps surfacing inside the modern one, in temples, columns, and ruins that stand between apartment blocks.

Even the transport system is part of it. Between stations the oldest metro line runs in the open through an archaeological park, and I photographed a metro train passing beneath the Acropolis, the red carriages framed by winter branches with the Parthenon on the hill above. Artefacts discovered during the construction works are displayed in the stations themselves.

The Acropolis

The Acropolis has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1987, and its reconstruction works, running since 1975, have brought the Parthenon most of the way back. From Lycabettus Hill I photographed the floodlit Acropolis with the sea behind it, the marble glowing gold against the blue hour while the lights of Piraeus and the Saronic Gulf fill the background.

Standing before the temples, you wonder how people without modern technology created something that has lasted thousands of years. The Acropolis Museum at the foot of the rock holds the artefacts uncovered there, and it earns the visit before or after the climb.

Mount Lycabettus

There is a hill in the centre of the capital, and that fact amazed me more than anything else in Athens. Mount Lycabettus stands 277 metres above sea level; according to legend, the goddess Athena dropped a piece of limestone here, and the older story says wolves once lived on the slopes, lycos being Greek for wolf. From the Acropolis I photographed the hill rising out of the pale city, a green pyramid with the white chapel of St George on top.

The climb is the evening ritual. I watched the sunset pour over the city and the sea from the summit, and on the way down caught the marble sea of houses in the last warm light, when the concrete of the modern city briefly looks like the stone of the ancient one. A funicular runs to the top for anyone who prefers to save their legs.

Monastiraki

Monastiraki does not really close. The square is a junction of metro lines, the centre of the city’s bargain trade, and the site of the famous flea market, and it stays loud from morning until well past midnight. From a rooftop above the square I photographed the neighbourhood at twilight with the Acropolis above it, the Tzistarakis Mosque and the ruins of Hadrian’s Library in the middle ground and the Parthenon floating over everything.

I came back for the same view after dark, when the market stalls glow and the floodlights come on across the rock. The two frames, taken hours apart, are the short version of Athens: an ancient city living at full volume.

Temple of Hephaestus and the Ancient Agora

Completed around 415 BC, the Temple of Hephaestus is one of the best-preserved temples of the ancient world, dedicated to the god of metalworkers and fire; archaeologists have found potters’ and metal-working shops around it. From the Acropolis slope I photographed the temple standing above the trees of the Agora, a Doric island of marble with the modern city pressing in behind.

That contrast is the working definition of central Athens: the frame holds the 5th century BC and the 21st century AD in one exposure, separated by a line of pines.

Odeon of Herodes Atticus

The stone theatre on the southwest slope of the Acropolis was completed in 161 AD and renovated in 1950, and it still works for a living. Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Ennio Morricone have all performed on its stage. I photographed the marble cavea from the slope above, the tiers sweeping down to the checkerboard stage floor with the whole of western Athens behind the ruined arcade.

Attending a concert here is still on my list. Some photographs are a promise to come back.

The Panathenaic Stadium

The Panathenaic Stadium is built entirely of marble, and no other stadium in the world can say the same. The Panathenaic Games were held on this spot from the 6th century BC, when spectators sat on the natural slopes; the rebuilt stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, and the Athens Marathon still finishes inside it every November.

I photographed the marble horseshoe under a dramatic sky, the Greek and Olympic flags straining on their poles in front of the empty tiers. As someone who loves big sporting events, I stood there imagining the sound this bowl can hold.

Zappeion Hall

Evangelos Zappas, a Greek who made his fortune in Romania, funded an Olympic building for Athens after the poet Panagiotis Soutsos convinced him the country needed one. The architect Theophil Hansen delivered it in 1888, though Zappas did not live to see the neoclassical front behind its row of flags. Greece’s first national radio station began broadcasting from the building in 1938.

The real surprise waits inside. The open-air circular atrium is a ring of two-tiered colonnades around a checkerboard marble floor, and its geometry is so exact that I spent my whole session there just working the symmetry. It remains my favourite interior in Athens.

Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens

The Metropolitan Cathedral took twenty years to build, and the marble of 72 demolished churches went into its walls before its completion in 1862. It hosts the ceremonies of national significance, and its square sits a short walk from Monastiraki. I photographed the cathedral floodlit at night, the mosaic band over the entrance glowing between the twin bell towers, the Greek flags on both towers blurred by the wind and the long exposure.

Visiting in winter meant the square was empty at that hour. That was the trade I made all week, cold hands for clean frames, and I would make it again.

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki is Greece’s second-largest city, founded in 315 BC and stacked with Byzantine churches that appear suddenly at the end of ordinary streets. Its symbol is the White Tower: a Byzantine fortification stood here first, and the Ottoman tower that replaced it served as a prison and execution site, known grimly as the Red Tower. After the city returned to Greece in 1912, the tower was whitewashed and renamed, a symbolic purification, and today it houses a museum.

I spent a long evening walking circles around it while Daria read a book on a bench. The frame finally came at blue hour, the White Tower and the National Theater of Northern Greece in violet light. Another night I set up on Leoforos Nikis for the tower over streams of evening traffic, the light trails doing the compositional work the empty boulevard could not.

Eptapyrgio and the Rotunda

My plan was a sunset over the Rotunda, the oldest monument in Thessaloniki, built under the Roman emperor Galerius in the 4th century. The composition only worked from apartment balconies we had no access to, so plan B was already running: we noticed the Eptapyrgio fortress in the distance and sprinted up the hill, camera bag and all, arriving exactly as the sun met the horizon. The result was the sunset over the city and the Thermaic Gulf from the Byzantine ramparts, the brick crenellations burning orange in the foreground.

Eptapyrgio means Fortress of Seven Towers. It has ten. Some names survive their own arithmetic.

Church of Panagia Chalkeon

An app led us around Thessaloniki’s sights, and it earned its keep when it pointed us to the Church of Panagia Chalkeon, an 11th-century brick church the locals call the Red Church. The building sits in a sunken garden with apartment blocks pressing in on every side, which made the composition the whole problem: only by centring the path that leads to its red door could I keep the frame in the Byzantine century it belongs to.

That trick, letting a path or a gate crop the modern city away, paid for itself across the whole trip.

Rhodes

Rhodes was a different kind of trip, a week with a car and a boat ticket. The Mandraki Windmills were the first thing I noticed when researching the island: more than a dozen once ground imported grain at the harbour’s edge in the medieval period, and three survive. I carried 14 kilograms of gear around the harbour all day before settling on a long telephoto composition, the three windmills compressed into a single rank, with the fortress of Agios Nikolaos behind them.

That fortress got its own frame later: a full moon hanging clean above the lighthouse, the Greek flag mid-flutter, low clouds turning the sky lavender. One moon, one composition, one chance; it remains one of my favourite frames from Greece. The full island, from the Old Town to Lindos, is covered in my Rhodes travel guide.

Rhodes Old Town and Kallithea Springs

On a morning run through the Old Town I stumbled on the ruins of the Church of the Virgin of the Burgh, a Gothic church from the early 14th century, destroyed during the Ottoman siege of 1522 and bombed again in the Second World War. I waited ten minutes for the sun to climb, and then photographed the light bursting through the ruined windows, a sun star caught in the empty Gothic arch. The medieval town around it was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988.

Driving south towards Lindos, I stopped at Kallithea Springs, an Italian-era spa complex on the sea. From above I photographed the domed pavilion over its black-and-white mosaic courtyards; inside, the sun pierced the star-shaped openings of the dome for only a few seconds, just long enough to switch lenses.

Lindos and Symi

In Lindos I woke early to photograph the sunrise over the Acropolis of Lindos, and then turned 180 degrees. A sailboat was lining up perfectly between the silhouetted headlands, so the zoom lens came out and the plan changed: the sailboat crossing the calm water at sunrise ended up a better frame than the one I had driven there for. Turning around remains the cheapest lens I own.

From Rhodes we took the ferry to Symi, less than two hours northwest. The island is defined by a harbour of symmetrical neoclassical facades in pastel colours stacked above turquoise water, an architecture completely different from Athens or Thessaloniki. Sponge diving shaped the island’s fortunes, and one of the sponges came home with us.

Photographing Greece

Greece taught me the value of the second look. The Lindos sailboat was behind me while I photographed the plan. The Eptapyrgio sunset was plan B, reached at a run. The Panagia Chalkeon only worked once the path replaced the skyline, and the full moon over Agios Nikolaos allowed exactly one attempt.

The cities reward winter: I had the Metropolitan Cathedral square and the Lycabettus paths nearly to myself in January, with low sun all day. The islands reward the edges of the day, before the cruise passengers land and after they leave. In between, there is always a ferry, and the ferry is never a wasted frame.

When to Visit Greece

We visited Athens in winter deliberately, and it was the right call: mild days, short queues, and the kind of low light that flatters marble. The islands run on the opposite clock. Rhodes fills from late spring, cruise arrivals flood the harbours for a few midday hours, and the season stretches into October.

May, June, and September are the compromise months, warm enough for the sea and calm enough for tripods. In high summer, do what the locals do: claim the early morning, surrender the midday, and come back out when the light returns.

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