12 Things to Do in Athens in December

Many of the best things to do in Athens can be enjoyed beyond the summer, as it is logical for a city to maintain its charm and identity the rest of the year. So if you are planning to visit Athens in December and you are worried that there are no fun proposals, don't worry, because you have numerous options. Here are the best ones:

Meteora is a mountainous enclave that has about 13 monasteries of the Greek Orthodox Church of which six are accessible to the public. It is a very interesting place due to the fact that these monastic centers are located on small mountain massifs that create a landscape worthy of a fairy tale.

December is an ideal month to book an excursion to Meteora because there won't be as many tourists, even though the Christmas season makes religious monuments gain importance. It is also because you will have panoramic views of the nearby snow-capped mountains. Plus, there are often special discounts.

The drive from downtown Athens takes about four hours and mostly travels on fast-driving highways. This is one of the best single day tour or excursion plans from Athens.

But, without a doubt, the essential plan for your trip to Athens in the month of December is to book tickets for the Koilon theater show. With this activity you will travel back in time, specifically to the 5th century B.C., in the middle of Ancient Greece.

On a rooftop next to the Acropolis, you can enjoy a fun historical comedy starring popular characters such as Odysseus, the Cyclops or the daughters of Medea and Oedipus, while sipping a delicious glass of wine.

As with sweets, it stands to reason that Athens' gastronomy is even more interesting during the month of December than during the rest of the year. For it's no secret that the Christmas and New Year festivities create a cycle of celebrations that make food a very important cultural commodity in most Western countries.

To tell you a specific place to sit down for dinner is a bit tricky, as it all depends on when you work up an appetite and where you are. Clearly, Monastiraki and Plaka will be my immediate references due to the fact that they are the most authentic neighborhoods in Athens. Another no-fail option is to book a food tour.

The main dishes of Athenian culture that you have to order when you sit down to eat like a true Athenian are as follows:

• The frikase, which is a stew of meats and lettuce.
• Trahanas, which is a traditional wheat soup.
• The laharonizo with rice.
• Cabbage in tomato sauce.
• The revithia.
• The fasolada.
• The lahanontolmades.
• The giovarlakia, very advisable for the smallest of the house. They are meatballs of beef that are boiled in a very thick sauce of lime and eggs.

Athens is the graffiti and street art capital of Europe. There are entire neighborhoods such as Psyri and Exarchia that are districts for these plastic arts in the urban heart of the city. At the same time, December is a very appropriate month to take your time and enjoy this reconstruction of the Athenian urban landscape. The weather is favorable, since you will not have to escape the oppressive sun at each of the stops along your route. In addition, the absence of tourists is synonymous with comfort.

The urban tours offered by some guides in this area are quite practical in the fact that they take you to the most recognized works. This while you also learn about the urban culture of Athens and the Greek cultural identity in the modern times we live in.

Interesting details

• Prices: on average this kind of tours have a price of 25 € per person and usually have a duration of three hours. There are some cheaper ones and it all depends on what you are willing to pay. Some bike tours in Athens also pass through these neighborhoods and that can be an ideal combination.

Syntagma Square is a place you can never miss on your visit to Athens no matter what time of the year you are in Athens. However, in December it is even more important that you go to this corner of the city because on the 24th and 31st of this month there will be all kinds of church choirs with children singing Kálandas, the typical Greek Christmas carols.

This is a tradition in which children go from house to house singing typical Greek Orthodox Christmas songs in exchange for money and lots of sweets typical of Athenian cuisine. Nowadays it takes place all month long. Actually, it is not essential to go to this square to listen to Kálandas at this time of the year, although it is a place that I recommend thanks to its proximity to other iconic places in the city such as the Hellenic Parliament, the National Garden of Athens or the rest of the Syntagma neighborhood.

My other tip is that the day you decide to go to listen to Kálandas in the Plaka neighborhood also book the tourist bus of Athens, as they will take you to other corners of central Greece quickly. Allowing you to move around the area without the need to use public transport and while listening to an audio guide details about the history of the environment you travel.

On your tour of Athens in December, be sure to set aside an hour and a half of your time to attend a Greek dance performance at the Dora Stratou Theater, which is located on Filopapo Hill.

This performance, which will immerse you fully in Greek culture, features more than 70 professional singers, dancers and musicians. In addition, once the performance is over, you will have access to an exhibition with 2,000 traditional Greek dance costumes to soak up even more of this traditional dance.

Another point to note about this performance is that it takes place during sunset, so you can enjoy the colors of the sunset of this beautiful place.

December marks the beginning of the ice rink season. In the case of Athens, every year a rink is installed at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, a very nice place because it is a cultural complex that has the new concert hall of the Athens Opera and also a national library of great academic influence.

When you go skating at this rink you have the opportunity to see some of the artistic exhibitions that usually take place during the whole month of December inside the foundation's facilities. As this cultural complex and its respective ice skating rink are located in the municipality of Khallithea it is a good idea that you also dedicate yourself to know the streets of this beautiful port community, midpoint between the urban center of Athens and the center of Piraeus.

I advise you to go at night. Specifically, 9 p.m. is a good time to go knowing that in the winter it usually gets dark around 6-19 p.m. In fact, this is one of the best things to do in Athens at night during the month of December if you are looking for a quiet family activity.

Interesting details

• Prices: the prices are between 5 and 10 € depending on the age of the person or the day. It also influences if you rent ice skates or go with your own.
• Hours: it usually opens its doors around 6 pm and most commonly closes around midnight during the whole month of December.

Today, the Greek Orthodox Church is the religious institution with the most parishioners in the entire country. The aesthetics that define this branch of Christianity are quite interesting and, during the month of December, this institution offers all kinds of celebrations daily for the Christmas and New Year's Holidays, and all of them are worth visiting.

The Cathedral of the Annunciation of St. Mary is located in Mitropolis Square, which in turn is an important point of interest in the neighborhood of Monasteraki, one of the most famous in all of Athens. It stands out for its architectural style that perfectly follows the guidelines of the Greek-Byzantine aesthetics and is combined with some quite neoclassical details.

Its interior has nothing to envy to other wonders of religious architecture and, therefore, it is important that you visit it during the month of December. This time of the year will guarantee you the comfort you need to enjoy its Byzantine frescoes without having to deal with hundreds of tourists. In addition, it will allow you to see how the Greeks enjoy their Christian traditions in December.

In December all of Athens is filled with desserts. Those who year after year wish to relive the flavors of their childhood with sweets that can only be an invention of a gastronomy as authentic and diverse as the Hellenic one.

• Melomakarona is one of the great protagonists of this Greek culinary season. It is a piece of bread that was offered at funerals during the Middle Ages and with the passage of time honey was added to it and, from there, it mutated to become a typical dessert of the winter solstice and the whole month of December in general.
• The diples, the kourabiedes and the kaltsounis are other desserts that you cannot miss. In fact, many of them are still traditionally prepared until mid-February and, therefore, a search for the best ones in town is usually one of those things to see and do in Athens during the winter. If I have to recommend any specific place to try them I would say choose the most traditional and unoccupied cafe you can find in any of the touristy neighborhoods in the center, such as Monastiraki, Ekasarhia, Gazk, Kolonaki or Neapoli.

If you see Athens from the sky you can say that Kotziá Square is one of the most important points of the city. Not only for its architectural beauty but also for its strategic location within the center of this Mediterranean metropolis. On one side is the Athens City Hall and during the nights of December, and specifically on the evening of the 24th, an audiovisual show is offered that displays a light scenery on the facade of this important public building.

Many classify it as one of the most beautiful in the world, and every year they seek to innovate with new ideas, so that they can continue to surprise the Athenian citizens who have become faithful followers of this artistic proposal.

I recommend this alternative for your trip to Athens in the month of December because it is free entertainment that can be perfectly accompanied with other plans to do in Athens during Christmas or on the eve of it. And the truth is that this square is located in an area that you will surely be walking around during every day of your visit.

When you think of Greek history it automatically comes to mind that period 3,000 years ago when Ancient Greece was the most important Empire in the Western world. The reality is that its national history is much more diverse and interesting than you might imagine and the Byzantine occupation and Greek Christianity have such ancient foundations that exceed 1,000 years of history in this corner of the Balkans.

Therefore, visiting the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens should be an activity of your trip in December for the simple fact that this is an ideal time to visit without having to deal with too many tourists inside this Byzantine villa built in the nineteenth century. Inside you will find all kinds of Christian and Byzantine art and also learn how these cultures reshaped the Greek identity to become what they are as a nation today.

This time of year is also very favorable to go to this museum due to the fact that you will be guaranteed to have plenty of time left over due to the lack of tourists to go to other nearby museums, such as the Museum of Cycladic Art or the National Gallery of Athens.

Details of interest

• Prices: going to this museum in the month of December is even more convenient for the economic savings, as tickets cost 4 € per person for those over 25 years, while the rate rises to 8 € during the summer season. Children under 25 years of age are admitted free of charge.
• Opening hours: it opens every day of the week at 8 am and closes at 8 pm. The exception is on Tuesdays, as the day starts at 1 pm and also closes at 8 pm.

The Athens Concert Hall is a cultural space with one of the best acoustics in all of Greece. During the month of December, every year, it is usual that it is full of events and the most common is that these are opera concerts or ballet performances with stagings such as The Swan Lake, The Nutcracker or other Greek comedies.

I advise you that if you have time in your itinerary get tickets for the event that coincides with the dates of your visit, I assure you that it is an experience you will never forget.

Also, since it is a time of the year with a low tourist influx, I assure you that you will be living the experience like a real local who enjoys the cultural offerings of their own city.

December already features a drastic drop in temperatures compared to mid-autumn and you can expect lows of around 5 or 6 degrees Celsius, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying the best things to see and do in Athens.

Highs can climb to 15 degrees on a sunny day, but it's still too cold to fully enjoy those Athens cruises that characterize summer and spring.

In December Athens is usually filled with a fairly moderate number of tourists, but it has to do with Greek people returning home to visit relatives.

It is not a sought after international destination in the tourist industry at Christmas, which makes it an ideal place if you are looking to enjoy a city in a quiet way, on your own terms and by the standards of the locals.

Prices in Athens during the month of December are a bit more expensive than in the rest of the tourist off-season that runs from fall through early spring.

However, the savings are significant over the summer and on average you could spend 40% less than you would have to shell out on a trip with the same activities in mid-summer.

Bring coats and comfortable clothes for walking, as this city offers you routes to walk the entire length of the city. Footwear should be appropriate for this type of urban tourism and it would not hurt to choose versatile clothes that you can wear in a casual context or that also look good in a more elegant environment.