At the Acropolis Museum you’ll find a remarkable collection of sculptures and artifacts that once graced the ancient site, perhaps the most famous among them the Caryatids, Peplos Kore, and the Parthenon Frieze—significant parts of which the government is trying to repatriate. Packed with immersive multimedia displays, the Acropolis Museum offers one of the most dynamic and interactive museum experiences in Athens. To avoid queuing for tickets, consider an Acropolis Museum tour.

If you’re only briefly in Athens and want a whirlwind tour of the country’s heritage, the Benaki Museum is a treasure trove of more than 100,000 artifacts spanning many eras and civilizations. In addition to illuminating exhibits, such as an extensive collection of Greek regional costumes and items dating from Greece's war for independence, the art offering through the ages is exceptional: Think well-preserved Byzantine icons and works by the Cretan-born painter and sculptor El Greco.

The Museum of Cycladic Art is, as you might expect, home to the world’s most extensive collection of ancient Cycladic figurines. For the uninitiated, the Cyclades refers—in addition to the name of a popular island group—to an ancient Aegean culture dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. More than 3,000 artifacts of Cycladic—as well as ancient Greek and Cypriot—art are showcased here, with the remarkable early Cycladic sculptures being the biggest draw.

Set in the chic Kolonaki neighborhood, and arguably one of the unsung heroes of Athens’ historical museums, the Byzantine and Christian Museum offers captivating insight into Greece’s rich religious heritage. The monastery-esque former mansion known as Villa Ilisia showcases an impressive collection of more than 25,000 artifacts, including well-preserved icons, frescoes, manuscripts, ceramics, ecclesiastical textiles, paintings, and jewelry.

If being in Athens has done nothing but ignite your enthusiasm for all things antiquity, make a beeline for the National Archaeological Museum. Though inevitably losing out in raw visitor numbers to the Acropolis Museum, this is nonetheless one of the top-rated Athens museum attractions—not to mention the largest archaeological museum in Greece.

So, you’ve (probably) had your fix of ancient history, but what happened after the end of the Byzantine period? Housed in the former seat of Parliament, the Athens National Historical Museum (Ethnikó Istorikó Mouseío) is the place to find out, with its permanent exhibition tracing Greece’s history from Ottoman rule until today and focuses particularly on the War of Independence and the founding of the modern Greek state.

No Athens museums guide worth its salt could fail to mention the National Gallery of Greece. As you might have inferred, this Athens institution is the country’s preeminent art gallery, with more than 20,000 works in its collection of post-Byzantine Greek and European art. Spanning the 14th–20th centuries, the National Gallery boasts works by artists as diverse as El Greco, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, and Nikolaos Gyzis.

When it comes to exploring contemporary art in Athens, perhaps unsurprisingly, the National Museum of Contemporary Art should be top of the itinerary. Taking over a former brewery, the museum’s collection of works by Greek and international artists—from Ilya Kabakpv and Nan Goldin to Chryssa and Marina Abramović—is complemented by a calendar of thought-provoking temporary exhibitions.

The Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation may have only opened its doors to the Athenian public in 2019, but this relative newcomer is already considered among the top art galleries in Athens. Beyond the big international names you’ll find here—think: Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock, to name just a few—the museum’s setting in a 1920s neoclassical mansion offers a prime opportunity to indulge your inner architecture nerd.