ATHENS RISING

Earlier this year, GQ spent a few days hanging out with Athens' cool kids-from a 22-year-old basketball player to a 74-year-old sculptor. Greek writer Panayiota Soutis explains why the city's creative scene has never looked better.

- PANAYIOTA SOUTIS

WHEN YOU LAND in Athens—with visions of pearly marble and the Acropolis on your mind—one of the first things you see is, in fact, a sea of concrete apartment blocks covered in graffiti.

Grit is now just as much a part of the city’s fibre as the Parthenon. “Athens doesn’t hide the dirty aspects of life,” says Terpsichore Savvala, a sculptor who was raised in Exarcheia, a neighbourhood known for its anarchist bookshops and tavernas full of politically charged chat. “Seeing both the good and bad is far more romantic than pretending everything is perfect.”

Life has never been perfect for Athenians, but today, the city is in the midst of recovering its vibrancy. After a brutal economic crash in 2009 that was exacerbated by the pandemic in 2020, the art industry is now red hot, the dining scene hyperactive, and public transport has been upgraded so you can get around well after 2am on a Saturday night.

“Athens is exciting because it still feels like you can discover things,” says Savvala. “It’s freer. Scenes are being created.” Some call it “Berlin on the Med”—in a nod to the arty crowds that have moved here after getting priced out of the German capital.

But the city’s got its own unique strain of Unesco meets grunge going on, and the fashion world has taken note: Cos hosted its spring/summer show in the Dionyssomarble Quarry last year, and local designer Dimitra Petsa has made the Athenian look go global, outfitting Bella Hadid and Teyana Taylor in her signature Di Petsa dripping-wet-goddess dresses.