Exarcheia’s elusive charm likely springs from its dual identity as a petit-bourgeois neighborhood and a haven for radicals and upstarts. For decades, rebels with–and often without–a cause have flocked here, earning this residential district in the heart of Athens a reputation as the stomping ground of beats, bohemians, and other common or garden variety dissenters. It’s never been a pretty neighborhood, nor could it ever be described as quaint, but it’s always pulsated with a special vibe. Exarcheia, until recently, was both familiar and strange, equally to residents, regulars, and “rookies” as a link between past and present. Yet in the last couple of years even the most familiar have come to feel estranged from their neighborhood–something I feel as I stroll the streets and it fills me with sadness. A place I’ve always identified as part of “my” city feels as if its slipping away.
One of city’s oldest residential quarters, Exarcheia remains decidedly so, despite the cluster of cafes, restaurants, bars, and small boutiques selling a mix of bohemian, punk, and gothic clothes or jewelry. There’s a proliferation of record stores selling vinyl albums, bookstores, small publishing houses. It’s a sign of Exarcheia’s character that with the exception of a couple of Greek sandwich shops on its periphery, there are no franchise or chain stores. It seems fitting that the district takes its name from the office held by the owner of a grocery at the corner of Themistokleous and Solomou streets who was an Epirot exarch, or provincial chief.
Exarcheia is contained roughly within the area marked by Alexandras, Kallidromiou, Mavromichali, Solonos and Patission (officially 28is Oktovriou); one of the city’s most popular tourists sights, the National Archaeological Museum, sits on its border. This neighborhood of deteriorating pre-second world war townhouses and aging post-second second world war apartment buildings has been patched in places by gentrification although it’s been passed over by the wave of urban renewal that was washed through other old neighborhoods like Psyrri. Posters advertising concerts or proclaiming protest actions are layered on walls, and graffiti–angry scrawling has mostly replaced the witty calls to arms–deface most buildings.
The district slumps over a steep, narrow basin created between Lykavittos and Strefi Hill, one of the smaller promontories of the Anchesmos ridge. It’s separated by an even narrower strip–and far steeper social divide–from Kolonaki. If Exarcheia symbolizes the city’s political and social counter-culture, Kolonaki represents its establishment and elite. There are no tangible borders between the two, yet once crossed, their boundaries become obvious especially when viewed from the opposite sides of Plateia Lykavittou, a little known-square that sits between the two.
Following Anagnostopoulou, one of the city’s power addresses, from Kolonaki square isn’t a bad way to approach Exarcheia. As you look down from the top of the steps leading to Odos Sina, your vision is blurred by the dullness of concrete-grayness expanse of the city’s western, working class suburbs. Scala Vinoteca (Sina 50 at Anagnostopoulou, tel.: 210 361 0041), all but concealed behind the shrubbery, beckons as a place to pause, although with its extensive list of over fifty wines offered by the glass, it might be too tempting to end the tour before it has begun.
Even as you start the descent down Didotou towards Sina, your senses are assaulted by a cacophony of human sound–traffic, a plant vendor bellowing his wares over a loudspeaker, voices raised in argument–that somehow stays at ground level. This is still a grey zone between Kolonaki and Exarcheia, with To Baraki tou Vassili (Didotou 3, tel.: 210 362 3625), a cozy live-music venue that holds a special place in boho-Athens nightlife, next to the sleekly designed ultra-urban Union (Didotou 5 at Massalias, tel.: 210 368 0015), a café-restaurant that is part of the Hellenic American Union. In my mind these two establishments would seem to form the symbolic boundary between Kolonaki and Exarcheia except for the fact that they’re on the wrong side of each other.
Prassa, a stump of a street that’s now a pedestrian walk, skirts the high walls of the prestigious Ecole Francaise d’Athenes, the city’s oldest foreign archaeological school. The compound is like a snapshot of mid-nineteenth-century Athens, with its imposing buildings and impressive gardens. At the other end, the dome of Ayios Nikolas Pefkakion (St Nicholas of the Pines) beckons; the church, though massive and a repository of sacred relics, is little-known outside the neighborhood.
Descending Odos Valtetsiou, past the crossroads of Asklipiou, Ippokratous, Harilaou Trikoupi leads into Exarcheia’s heart–the plateia. These cross-streets are busy thoroughfares, yet worth exploring if only to discover an old-fashioned kafeneion like Mouria (corner of Harilaou Trikoupi and Kallidromiou) a lingering male stronghold although women are warmly welcomed into the heated discussions about politics or football conducted over a demitasse of Greek coffee or tsipouro with meze, depending on the time of day. There’s also Asimakopoulos (Harilaou Trikoupi 82, tel.: 210 361 0092), one of the city’s oldest pastry shops that snatches you off the street with the intoxicating smell of freshly baked tsoureki that’s strong enough to overpower the noxious bus fumes. Exarcheia “square” is actually a small triangle lined with cafes and bars. From here it’s easy to fan out in several directions as each of the triangle’s sides marks the boundary of a separate Exarcheia quarter. Stournari, which leads west towards Patission, is the city’s “Silicon Alley” and until recently the only place where techies could find motherboards and memory chips and other computer paraphernalia. An Club (Solomou 13-15, tel.: 210 330 5056) is about a block off the square’s west; this no-frills basement rock venue is small enough for you to feel almost like you’re on stage too. Spirou Trikoupi, named after the first prime minister of modern Greece and father of one of Greece’s most revered premiers, cuts through the Exarcheia’s most non-descript sector as it extends towards Leoforos Alexandras. The best area to explore is around the plateia, especially the streets to its east.
Breaking for a coffee on the square opens a range of choices. There’s Café Diplo (Themistokleous 70, tel.: 210 330 1177), a popular meeting place for students at one end of the square, or Floral (Themistokleous 80, tel.: 210 380 0070), a long-standing popular haunt that occupies the ground floor of a blue Bauhaus-influenced building at its other end. Renamed Floral Books + Coffee, it frequently hosts readings, screenings and other events. Just across Arahovis is Vox (Themistokleous 82 & Arahovis 56, tel.: 210 383 5811), a spacious café with bookstore section that occupies the ground level of the Vox Cinema. Continuing along Themistokleous towards Kallidromiou, there’s also Ostria (Themistokleous 65, tel.: 210 330 0907), a lively café-bar occupying a prettily restored pre-war building. Inside, it has a pub-like atmosphere; outside its patio has an exotic air.
Kallidromiou is one of Exarcheia’s best-known streets and the site of its weekly street produce market or laiki that isn’t just frequented by locals but by Exarcheia fans who combine a Saturday morning trip to the market with coffee at their favorite old haunt. Broader changes affecting the neighborhood have somewhat dampened Kallidromiou’s atmosphere, but some old haunts, or stekia, obstinately resist succumbing to fads. One is Ama Lahei (Kallidromiou 69 & Methonis 66, tel.: 384 5978), a taverna with a menu as unprepossessing as its interior. Yet I’ve fond memories of many leisurely meals peppered over boisterous political arguments here, especially in ample avli in warmer weather.
Paraskinio (Kallidromiou 64) and Bourbon (Kallidromiou 68) across Kallidromiou do their best to continue the tradition of the area’s legendary watering holes that have long since closed, but are too stylized to pull it off. Paraskinio draws a slightly older, Left-leaning crowd, than the trendier Bourbon. But it’s a different Exarcheia, a different Athens now. I think cell phones eliminated the need for regular haunts: on visits from London, and later Washington, I remember nights spent hopping from one club to the next, meeting friends also making the rounds. Mylos and before that Green Door where visiting rockers like Nick Cave dropped for a drink after an Athens gig. A handful of such places from the late 1970s and early 1980s have survived, but in name only. Intriga (Dervenion 60 and Themistokleous, tel.: 210 330 0936) understandably has made major concessions to the times; in its heyday, it would never be described as a place to chill as it has been in some recent reviews. Another survivor is Decadence (Emmanuil Benaki 87, tel.: 210 381 3685); in different premises and with a markedly different ambience, it preserves its reputation for cutting-edge tracks. That era has passed, and it’s largely because of patrons’ attitudes.
Shopping retains some of Exarcheia’s “old” flavor. Music stores sell albums–yes, vinyl–in plastic dustcovers; most are rock or heavy metal but even if you’re not into groups like Slayer there’s a unique pleasure in flipping through the stacks. I especially like the eclectic selection at A Strange Attractor (Solomou 14, tel.: 210 380 3618) but also Dark Side (Emmanuil Benaki 57, tel.: 210 384 8353) which is far more promising than it looks. When you’re done, you can move on to B-Brain Store (Didotou 34, tel.: 210 363 5381) to rifle through stacks of science fiction and horror novels and comic books. I find nostalgia sometimes pushes me to peruse items in which I have little genuine interest, but a favorite place to kill time is Zogler (Tzavella 3, tel.: 210 381 5681), a magic store where you can buy and try all manner of tricks.
Craftsmanship lives on here, from workshops like Psaltiri (Emmanuil Benaki 101, tel.: 210 330 4198) to places like Manufactura Lab (Zoodohou Pigis 29, tel.: 210 381 1470), an “art shop” that sells accessories made from recycled beads, old computer chips, and other materials. Punk lives on here and gothic rules, and it’s fun trying to put together a look at small stores like Black and Rose (Solomou 16, tel.: 210 380 2555) with the black dresses and corsets or the 1960s’ inspired dresses and platform heels from Buy or Die (Themistokleous 68, tel.: 210 330 4666).
Exarcheia is home to at least two of my favorite restaurants–Rififi (Emmanuil Benaki 69 at Valtetsiou, tel.: 210 330 0237) and Yantes (Valtetsiou 44, tel.: 210 330 1369), but no visit is complete without souvlaki. Divisions over which place has the best–Agrafa (Valtetsiou 50-52, tel.: 210 380 3144) or Kavouras (Themistokleous 64, tel.: 210 383 8010)–run deep. You’ve only to try both and decide.