Beaches in Athens

Athens has a coast, and having a coast is not the same as being a beach destination. The Riviera is one strip of road running south out of the city, and it gives you a swim and an afternoon rather than the reason you flew. If sand is the point of the trip, the islands are where you go, and the ferries are how you get there.

So read this page as a strip rather than a ranking. Three things decide your afternoon: where you stop on that road, whether the stretch is organised or free, and the fact that one of the famous names on this coast is not a beach at all.

Down the coast road. Glyfada comes first out of the city and is as much a shopping suburb and a marina as a beach. Voula follows it. Then Vouliagmeni on its bay, with Asteras, the private beach, beside it, and Kavouri on the peninsula just to the north. Varkiza sits further along, and the same road runs on to Cape Sounion at the end of Attica, which is why the Riviera and the temple can be one day. Every place on this page is on that single road, so the question is which stop, not which direction.

Organised or free, and the difference is money. An organised beach in Greece is a concession. Somebody runs the strip, charges for entry or for a lounger, and provides showers, changing rooms, food and somewhere to leave your things while you swim. A charge exists at all of them. We print no figure, because these concessions are retendered and repriced, day rates differ from weekend rates, and a number typed here is wrong for somebody by next season. Ask at the gate.

What most visitors never find out is that the Municipality of Vari-Voula-Vouliagmeni publishes its free beaches by name alongside the paid ones: Kavouri, Mikro Kavouri, Limanakia Vouliagmenis, Alkyonides, East Varkiza and small beaches in Voula. The choice on this coast is therefore not between paying and driving for an hour. It is between a lounger and a towel, in the same water, a few minutes apart. Limanakia is the outlier on that list, a series of rocky inlets scrambled down to from the roadside, where what you carry down is what you have. It is a swimming spot rather than a beach, and what anyone can manage on that ground is not a judgment this page is in a position to make.

The lake is a separate ticket. Lake Vouliagmeni is inland and is not on the sea. It is a brackish lake fed by thermal springs, with its own entrance and its own admission, and it is warm in months when the open sea is not, which gives it a longer season than anything on the coast. People turn up at the wrong gate with the wrong ticket often enough that it is worth saying plainly: the beach and the lake share a name and very little else.

What this page does not print. No opening hours, no admission and no lounger rates. Concessions change hands between seasons, and a wasted afternoon on a short trip is expensive. The pages below say what each place is; the operator or the municipality holds what it costs today.

One piece of timing outlasts all of it. This coast is where Athens itself goes at the weekend, so a July Saturday puts a city crowd and a visitor crowd on the same sand. A weekday in June or September is a different beach entirely, and the sea off Attica stays swimmable well past the month at which most people stop thinking about beaches. What the rest of the city is for is in our Athens guide.