National Garden Athens

Queen Amalia ordered a garden behind the new royal palace in 1838. Two years later Athens had 15.5 hectares of shade in the middle of it, and on an August afternoon it is still the coolest place to sit in the city centre.

A royal garden that became public

The layout was the work of the German agronomist Friedrich Schmidt, who went looking for plants abroad and brought in some 500 species, many of them carried home on Greek naval ships. A good number did not survive the dry Attic summers, and what grew instead is the dense, slightly overgrown canopy the garden is known for. It remained the private Royal Garden until it passed to the state and opened to the public under its present name in 1923.

What is inside

The paths were laid out for wandering rather than crossing: narrow gravel walks under heavy shade, opening now and then onto benches, ponds and small clearings.

• Ponds with ducks, terrapins and fish, the largest of them a fixture for anyone visiting with children.
• Roman remains turned up when the ground was dug: mosaic floors from a villa, column drums and capitals of several orders, and marble inscriptions set along the paths.
• A small zoo, in practice an enclosure of ducks, poultry, goats and peafowl, a modest survival of the menagerie Amalia imported along with the plants.
• A Botanical Museum in an old garden pavilion, plus a children's library, a playground and a cafe.

Getting in and getting through

Entry is free and there is no ticket office. The garden opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, which in practice means from about six in the morning until dusk, so considerably earlier in winter than in summer. There are gates on Amalias Avenue at the Syntagma end, on Vasilissis Sofias, on Irodou Attikou beside the presidential mansion, and two more from the Zappeion grounds.

The natural route is north to south: in from Syntagma, through the trees, out past the Zappeion and across to the Panathenaic Stadium, the marble stadium rebuilt for the 1896 Olympics. Twenty minutes end to end if you do not stop, and a good deal longer if you do.

A stop before you sail

Charters out of Athens leave from Alimos or from Lavrio, half an hour to an hour from Syntagma Square, and most guests spend a day in the city beforehand. The garden is the obvious way to use the hottest part of it, since the Acropolis and the open archaeological sites are unshaded and crowded by midday and this is five minutes' walk from both Syntagma and the Zappeion. A couple of hours under the canopy, then the taxi to the marina and a first night at anchor off Aegina, one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Athens.