16 cafés in 6 citys. Places change: check opening hours before you go.
One of the city's oldest kafeneia, dating to 1839. Hans Christian Andersen passed through in 1841, an anti-monarchist newspaper was written here, and during the Occupation it was the first place in Athens to hand out food before the Gestapo took the building.
Order: Greek coffee · frappé
💡 Coffee made the slow way takes a while; sit on the upper floor away from the Monastiraki crowds.
The Loumidis brothers opened their coffee shop on this corner in 1920. It roasted its own beans and introduced Brazilian coffee to Athenians; the parrot logo is still on the packets of Greek coffee sold in every supermarket.
Order: Greek coffee · freshly ground coffee to take home
💡 Buy ground Greek coffee here as a souvenir; it is the same blend Athenians brew at home.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
Karolos Zonaras opened this café-patisserie in 1939 after years in the United States. Sartre and de Beauvoir kept a table overlooking Panepistimiou in the 1950s, and the room reopened after a full renovation.
Order: espresso with a pastry · ice cream
💡 It is two minutes from Syntagma; a good stop before or after the Parliament changing of the guard.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A café in the town's municipal garden since 1870. Eleftherios Venizelos and Nikos Kazantzakis were among its visitors, and a permanent photo exhibition tells the garden café's history.
Order: Greek coffee · frappé
💡 Shade under the garden trees makes it a good midday stop in summer.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
Vassilis Varsos opened a dairy shop in central Athens in 1892, aged 16, and the family moved to Kifissia in 1922. It is still a pastry café serving yoghurt, rice pudding and cakes made the old way.
Order: Greek yoghurt with honey · rizogalo (rice pudding) · Greek coffee
💡 Kifissia is the last stop on Metro line 1; Varsos is a short walk from the station.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
An Ottoman-era coffeehouse said to date to 1800. In 1922 George Spanoudakis, a refugee from Asia Minor, received it in exchange for the two cafés he had left behind; his great-granddaughter runs it today, and the old price list in Greek and Arabic survives.
Order: Greek coffee
💡 Look for the marble tables and the original wooden ceiling.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
The patisserie dates back to 1948 and is best known for its soft tsoureki. The Aristotelous Square shop is part of the city's morning and afternoon coffee routine.
Order: chocolate tsoureki · freddo espresso
💡 Buy tsoureki to take away and drink your coffee on the waterfront promenade, a block away.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
Operating since 1840, it was the favourite of the town's doctors, lawyers and merchants. The mirrors, oval tables and sofas are by the Viennese maker Michael Thonet, and a case holds weapons from the 1821 Revolution.
Order: Greek coffee
💡 Useful as a stop on a Peloponnese road trip.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A family roaster since 1923, now in its fourth generation. This is the place in Athens to watch Greek coffee made the old way: the briki is pushed through a bed of hot sand (hovoli) and served with a piece of loukoumi.
Order: ellinikos (Greek coffee) on sand, metrios
💡 Pair it with a walk through the meat and fish halls of the central market across the street.
Co-owner Giorgos Papantoniou won the 2025 Hellenic Brewers Cup. The bar does its own baking and runs a V60 station; it made the 2025 European Coffee Trip top ten for Greece.
Order: V60 filter · freddo cappuccino
💡 Pangrati is a 15-minute walk from the Panathenaic Stadium.
Opened in 2011 in Peristeri, a residential suburb west of the centre, and roasting on site. It runs as a coffee bar by day and turns into a cocktail bar at night.
Order: Ethiopian or Colombian filter · espresso
💡 Peristeri is on Metro line 2; it is about 15 minutes from Omonia.
A neighbourhood café on a square in Galatsi, north of the centre, pairing single-origin coffee with croissants and cinnamon rolls baked on site. It was listed in the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops Europe ranking.
Order: espresso · cinnamon roll
💡 Dogs are welcome inside.
Brothers Yiannis and Ellias Taloumis started Taf as a Greek-coffee importer and roaster in the early 1990s. The café on Emmanouil Benaki opened in 2009 and is generally seen as the start of Athens' specialty scene.
Order: single-estate filter · freddo espresso
💡 It is a short walk from Omonia and the Exarchia side streets; stop here before the National Archaeological Museum.
Run by Tasos Delichristos, a past Greek barista champion and 2008 World Coffee in Good Spirits winner. The multi-floor Thiseio flagship has a dedicated pour-over station.
Order: pour-over · espresso tonic
💡 Iraklidon is the café street under the Acropolis; walk on to the Ancient Agora afterwards.
The first Kross opened in August 2015 beside one of the old town's two historic mosques, in a building that was practically in ruins. It ranked #14 in the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops Europe list and now has several branches in Chania and one in Athens.
Order: pour-over · cold drip · cake from sister bakery Black Eyed Kate
💡 Come early: the room gets morning sun and fills up by mid-morning in summer.
A specialty roastery and café run by Valantis, an experienced barista and World Coffee Events judge. The roastery sits in an 1887 building in Ladadika; the café ranked #28 in the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops Europe list.
Order: filter · freddo espresso
💡 Thessaloniki is where the frappé was invented in 1957; try one elsewhere in town, and specialty here.