Age of the Aegean

With a wave of high- end hotel openings and innovative restaurants, the Athenian Riviera's reinvention continues.

- Hester Underhill

FROM LEFT A guest room at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club Athens; the property's façade; a niçoise salad from its restaurant, Sebastian.

IN THE 1960S, the stretch of coastline just south of Athens—beginning at the port of Piraeus and sprawling some 40 miles along the western shore of the Attica Peninsula—was the place to see and be seen. Brigitte Bardot, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra, and other celebrities vacationed there, camping out at the Astir Palace—the grande dame of Riviera elegance and a fixture in films, fashion shoots, and society pages. In the 1970s, however, once travelers could reach the Greek islands directly by air, the area’s fortunes began to fade.