A Byzantine-era church hidden in a wooded area below the Acropolis.

The oldest standing Byzantine church in Athens is tucked within a monastery in the middle of an upscale shopping district.

A man's head is enshrined beneath a statue near the first building constructed for the modern Olympic Games.

The Cycladic architecture makes this Athens neighborhood feel like an island paradise hidden in the shadow of the Acropolis.

Scars of this building's past life as a violent prison still cover its walls.

This striking sculpture of Icarus honors Greece's fallen flyers.

The site where hundreds of Greeks were tortured by the Nazi secret police is now a cosmetics store.

A crushed gate and giant bronze head serve as a reminder of Greece's fight for freedom.

The ruins of an ancient Roman tomb hidden in the basement of a trendy clothing store.

This ancient hydrological marvel is now the base of a modern outdoor cinema.

The railway carts travelers to central Athens's highest peak, which offers stunning vistas of the city.

There are many Byzantine-era churches still standing in Athens, but this is the only one with a 2,500-year-old column rising through its roof.

This small 16th-century church in Athens is almost entirely surrounded by a modern building.

The only surviving choragic monument is a trophy awarded in 334 BC for the winning dramatic chorus.

A Byzantine church containing the holy remnants of three saints sits atop the site of an ancient temple.

An ancient octagonal weather station named for the eight Greek gods of wind.

The ruined doorway is a portal to the building's turbulent and torturous past.

A sharp sculpture made of thousands of pieces of jagged glass.

This small chapel holds the mummified heart of one of the heroes of the Greek Revolution.

A grotesque collection of wax limbs depicting the symptoms of venereal disease.

The oldest cemetery of modern-day Athens blends the modern and ancient worlds.

This mystical orb covered in strange symbols is thought to have been used in ancient Greek magical rituals.

This gem is often wrongly overshadowed by the larger, newer Metropolis church in Athens.

A sprawling collection of books and manuscripts about ancient Greece that would have put their famed libraries to shame.