The Most Beautiful Places in Attica
7 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Attica are Parthenon, Odeon of Herodes Atticus and Temple of Hephaestus. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Attica is the peninsula around Athens, a dry, bright land of limestone hills and marble quarries that became the cradle of classical Greece. The white marble of Mount Pentelicus, the wealth of the Athenian state in the fifth century BC and a generation of architects and sculptors produced buildings that became the standard for the rest of Western architecture.
On the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Doric temple of Athena completed in the fifth century BC, still dominates the city. On its southern slope, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, a stone theatre from the Roman era, is again used for performances. Below, in the Ancient Agora, the Temple of Hephaestus is one of the best-preserved Greek temples anywhere, with its roof and columns largely intact.
Across the Saronic Gulf on the island of Aegina, the Temple of Aphaia stands on a pine-covered hill with its double row of columns, its pediment sculptures now in Munich. In the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the Artemision Bronze, a god caught in the act of throwing, was recovered from the sea off Cape Artemision and is one of the few large bronzes to survive from classical Greece.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Parthenon | Ruins | ✓ |
| 2 | Odeon of Herodes Atticus | Roman theatre | |
| 3 | Temple of Hephaestus | Ruins | |
| 4 | Artemision Bronze | Sculpture | |
| 5 | Daphni Monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
| 6 | Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion | Ruins | |
| 7 | Temple of Aphaia, Aegina | Ruins |
01 Parthenon
Παρθενώνας
Greece · 1.6 km from Athens37.972° N 23.727° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nonbirinonko from Pixabay The Parthenon looks perfectly straight only because almost nothing about it actually is.
Did you know? The gold-and-ivory statue of Athena inside was dedicated around 438 BCE, and Pericles reportedly said it held forty talents of pure gold.
02 Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Ωδείο Ηρώδου του Αττικού
Greece · 1.7 km from Athens37.971° N 23.725° E
Image by 2770862 from Pixabay Built into the southwest slope of the Acropolis, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus shows Athens the Roman way: a steep semicircle of marble seats facing a stage building whose three-storey wall of arched openings still rises about 28 metres against the rock.
Did you know? The stage building and its arched facade stand about 28 metres high, three storeys of Roman masonry.
03 Temple of Hephaestus
Ναός Ηφαίστου
Greece · 1.4 km from Athens37.976° N 23.721° E
Image by MartinFuchs from Pixabay On a low rise above the ancient Agora of Athens stands the most complete Greek temple still on its feet: a Doric colonnade with its roof line intact, looking across the old marketplace towards the Acropolis.
Did you know? In the nineteenth century the building served as a burial place for non-Orthodox Europeans, including Philhellenes who died for Greek independence.
04 Artemision Bronze
Ποσειδώνας του Αρτεμισίου
Greece · 0.4 km from Athens37.989° N 23.732° E
George E. Koronaios · CC0 The Artemision Bronze, known as the God from the Sea, is one of the few large Greek bronzes of the classical period to survive, and it is one of the highlights of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Did you know? No amphorae or ordinary trade cargo were recorded from the wreck, so its nature and exact date remain a puzzle.
05 Daphni Monastery
Μονή Δαφνίου
Greece · 9 km from Piraeus38.013° N 23.636° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Sp!ros · CC BY-SA 4.0 Daphni Monastery stands in a pine wood in Chaidari, about 11 km north-west of central Athens, beside the old Sacred Way that ran to Eleusis.
06 Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion
Ναός Ποσειδώνα (Σούνιο)
Greece37.650° N 24.025° E
Image by mixahlos from Pixabay At the southernmost point of Attica the land ends in a steep headland above the Aegean, and on its crest stand the white marble columns of the Temple of Poseidon. Roughly fifteen of the original Doric columns are still upright, enough to trace the outline of the building against the sky from far out at sea.
Did you know? Wilhelm Dörpfeld found evidence in 1884 that the temple was first planned with six by twelve columns before being built with six by thirteen.
07 Temple of Aphaia, Aegina
Ναός της Αφαίας
Greece · 26.2 km from Piraeus37.754° N 23.533° E
Image by aled7 from Pixabay On a hilltop in the east of Aegina, an island in the Saronic Gulf, the Doric columns of the Temple of Aphaia still stand around their cella, though the roof is long gone.
Did you know? The east pediment featured the Aeginetan hero Telamon fighting beside Heracles, while the west pediment gave a prominent place to his son Ajax at Troy.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Attica?
- On our list, Parthenon ranks first, followed by Odeon of Herodes Atticus and Temple of Hephaestus.
- Why is the Temple of Hephaestus so well preserved?
- The temple was converted into a church in the Middle Ages and remained in use for centuries, which protected it from being dismantled. It still has its roof structure and almost all of its columns.
- Is the Artemision Bronze Zeus or Poseidon?
- Scholars still disagree. The figure was found without the object in his hand, so it could have been a thunderbolt for Zeus or a trident for Poseidon.
- What was the Parthenon used for?
- It was built as a temple to Athena and also served as a treasury. Over its history it became a church, a mosque and, during the Ottoman period, a gunpowder store, which was hit and exploded in 1687.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Attica?
- In our collection, the places in Attica are most often ruins (4), archaeological sites (2), temples (1) and monasteries (1).
- How many places are on this list in Attica?
- The list covers 7 places.