This is Athens City Festival

Hispanic Film Festival at Aello
2025-05-26 20:00 - 23:30, 2025-05-27 20:00 - 23:30, 2025-05-28 20:00 - 23:30 (Europe/Athens) | Open Air Cinema “Aello”, Patission 140, Athens, Athens, 112 57, Greece
The best of Spanish-language cinema takes over Athens for an entire week in May. Visionary directors, acclaimed actors and celebrated screenwriters bring a breath of Spain, Chile, Argentina, Cuba and other beloved Spanish-speaking countries to the big screen.

CONQUISTADORS
2025-05-27 10:00 - 18:00, 2025-05-28 10:00 - 18:00, 2025-05-29 10:00 - 18:00 | Macart’s Cultural Space, Lenorman 244, Athens, Athens, 104 43, Greece
Nikos Kyriakopoulos and his conquistadors disembark on Lenorman Street.

Dragons and wild beasts, locals and conquistadors—and even Death himself—battle deep in untrodden jungles.

The thirty-six works in this exhibition are not intended to serve History or the historical genre of painting. Instead, the artist draws his material from the mythos surrounding the Age of Discovery, crafting images that move beyond naturalism, both in form and content. Created using monotype, a technique dating back to the 16th century, the works gain added resonance when paired with the fantastical stories they depict. The adventures of the characters serve as a point of departure—not only for the adventures of line and colour, but also for reflection on themes such as desire, fear, conflict and illusion.

Opening: Thursday 8 May 2025, 19:30–23:00

Opening hours: Monday to Friday: 10:00–18:00 Saturday: 11:00–15:00 Closed on Sunday

Giorgos Gyzis: Clippings: Athens
2025-05-27 11:00 - 20:30, 2025-05-28 11:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-29 11:00 - 20:30 | Ikastikos Kyklos, Akadimias 6, Athens, Athens, 106 71, Greece
Clippings: Athens presents the third series of paintings inspired by clippings sourced from old newspapers. Photographs, drawings, and articles about Athens emerge from the archives, transformed into visual artworks that evoke emotion. The works on display offer a brief journey through the evolving form of Athens, beginning with the distinctive sketches by 19th-century British travellers in Attica and culminating in the height of modernism during the 1950s and 60s.

Exhibition Opening: Saturday 10 May 2025, 12:00–17:00 Opening Hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 11:00–14:30 / 17:30–20:30

Wednesday, Saturday: 11:00–16:00

Closed Sunday and Monday

Vassilis Papageorgiou - Painting and Sculpture: Lignea Creatura Stans
2025-05-27 11:30 - 20:30, 2025-05-28 11:30 - 20:30, 2025-05-29 11:30 - 20:30 | Gallery Ersi, Kleomenous 4, Athens, Athens, 106 75, Greece
The worlds of plants, animals and humans—along with legend, myth, imagination and dream—form the basis of Vassilis Papageorgiou’s new artistic exploration. His paradoxical heroes and hand-crafted wooden creatures inhabit both two- and three-dimensional space in a state of perpetual whirling. Through an aesthetic lens, Papageorgiou reflects on the consequences of humanity’s destructive impact on the natural world. From this meditation, he generates new values—drawn from the cultural references of nature and tradition—that define the conditions for coexistence.

Opening hours: Monday – Friday: 11:30–14:30 & 17:30–20:30 Saturday: 11:30–15:00

TAKIMI II – Reconnections Contemporary Ceramics Exhibition
2025-05-27 12:00 - 20:00, 2025-05-28 12:00 - 20:00, 2025-05-29 12:00 - 20:00 | Pottery Museum, Melidoni 4-6, Athens, Athens, 105 53, Greece
The Museum of Modern Greek Ceramics, in collaboration with the French Institute of Greece, presents the exhibition TAKIMI II – Reconnections, featuring works by emerging ceramic artists Olga Vlassi and Auréline Caltagirone. The exhibition showcases pieces created during their 2024 artist residency at the French Lodging in Rhodes, organised by the French Institute of Greece. Their creations engage in a dialogue with the museum’s permanent collections, reflecting the myths and ceramic heritage of Rhodes through a contemporary lens. Through their work, the artists share impressions and personal narratives inspired by their time on the island—reconnecting modern expression with tradition and the historical context that shaped it.

Curated by: Thalassini Bratsou

Opening: Sunday 18 May 2025, 20:30

Opening hours: Monday: 12:00–15:00 Tuesday–Thursday: 12:00–20:00 Friday: 12:00–15:00 Saturday: 11:00–14:00

How to Fit Inside the City
2025-05-27 12:00 - 20:00, 2025-05-28 12:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-29 12:00 - 20:00 | Athens Gallery7, Solonos 20, Athens, Athens, 106 73, Greece
The work of Haris Baskozos is compelling not only for its final forms but also for the sources of inspiration behind them. The artist studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and fine arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts. When drawing from his background in architecture, his work leans toward a rectilinear style that echoes urban planning and evokes a kind of “emotional Mondrian.” In these compositions, consciousness seems to take the lead. In contrast, when his fine arts training prevails, his work shifts towards a freer, more instinctive expression, dominated by human-like forms and influenced by art brut, where the unconscious plays the central role. In both cases, the final result is not a strict monologue of either approach, but rather a dialogue—one side mostly leading, the other echoing through. In this way, Baskozos offers a fascinating visual argument: the idea of collectivity (the city) tends to be shaped through a more conscious process, while reflections on individuality (the human being) emerge through the unconscious.

Opening hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 12:00–20:00 Wednesday & Saturday: 12:00–16:00

Vassilis Karakatsanis: Urban Tools
2025-05-27 12:00 - 21:00 | Genesis Gallery, Ippokratous 121, Athens, Athens, 114 72, Greece
Vassilis Karakatsanis invites us on a journey through the spectrum of contemporary existence—a complex, ever-evolving interplay of memories, collective narratives and social dynamics. His exhibition Urban Tools unfolds as a compelling dialogue between past and present, the personal and the monumental. Seven large-scale paintings, accompanied by numerous smaller works—created using acrylic, oil and gouache on canvas—invite a deep exploration of life in all its textures and tones. At the heart of Karakatsanis’ practice lies a transcendent inner process shaped by memory and materiality. The exhibition title hints at the hidden mechanisms that define a place’s essence: the subtle, often invisible tools that help us navigate, define and interpret the environments we inhabit—as well as those that shape and compose our very being. The urban landscape is not only his subject matter; it becomes his medium. Each brushstroke reveals the layered relationship between its singularity and the stories it holds. Symbols of personal and collective identity, ideology and emotion are interwoven into the fabric of daily life.

Opening night: Thursday 8 May 2025, 20:00

Opening hours: Tuesday, Thursday & Friday: 12:00–21:00 Saturday: 12:00–15:00 Closed on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday

Athens Cocktails
2025-05-27 15:00 - 23:00 | Thisseos Square, Thisseos Square, Athens, Athens, 118 51, Greece
We mix delicious, easygoing cocktails, curate top dance-friendly tunes, and choose a unique setting to bring it all together. The result? A springtime afternoon that feels like the ultimate feel-good get-together.

Message in RGB and WHITE
2025-05-27 18:00 - 21:00, 2025-05-28 18:00 - 21:00 | Mosaico Fine Art Studio, Kesarias 18-20, Athens, Athens, 115 27, Greece
Mosaico Fine Art Studio (Athens) and Mobil Bóde Gallery (Budapest) co-present a mail art exhibition featuring works by Greek and Hungarian artists.

Opening: Saturday, May 24, 19:00.

Opening hours: Monday to Friday: 18:00–21:00 Saturday: 11:00–15:00 Closed on Sunday

Fairy Tales in the Square: Tatiana Fragkoulia - Lida Xydia
2025-05-27 19:00 - 20:30 | Kalliga Square, Kalliga Square, Athens, Athens, 112 53, Greece
This activity is only available in Greek.

Fairy tales, tales and more tales, with beans and peas and all the delights of the earth…

But also the salt, the pepper, the lemon, the sugar, and all the spices of the earth fill the stories we will tell with their deliciousness and fragrance. Come and listen to the story of the girl who couldn’t eat without lemon, the king whose daughter loved him like salt, the princess who married a man made of semolina, the girl who fed the prince Sleep with boiled chickpeas, Nasreddin Hodja who received baklava as a gift, and the vizier who yearned with all his heart to taste a pistachio loukoumi. All of them are fairy tales so delicious you’ll lick your fingers and enjoy with your whole heart all the flavors of life!

Greek Cinema Nights
2025-05-27 20:00 - 23:00 | Eleftherias Park, Eleftherias Park, Athens, Athens, 115 21, Greece
The city’s summer cinema pops up at Eleftherias Park. Under the stars, on the grass, a colourful crowd gathers for four nights of open-air screenings—ready to be transported by the magic of the big screen and the very best of contemporary Greek cinema.

May 26: Buzzheart
May 27: The Summer with Carmen
June 1: Stella
June 1: Mythopathy

Hispanic Film Festival at Ellinis
2025-05-27 20:00 - 23:30, 2025-05-28 20:00 - 23:30 | Open Air Cinema “Ellinis”, Leof. Kifissias 29, Athens, Athens, 115 23, Greece
A full week in May is dedicated to the highlights of Spanish-language cinema. Groundbreaking directors, renowned actors and celebrated screenwriters bring to Athens the spirit of Spain, Chile, Argentina, Cuba and other beloved Spanish-speaking countries—through stories that captivate, move and inspire.

Fairy Tales in the Square: Taxiarchis Beligiannis - Maria Ploumi
2025-05-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Pangrati Grove, Pangrati Grove, Athens, Athens, 116 35, Greece
This activity is only available in Greek.

Fairy Tales for Fearless Kids!

Who doesn’t love a good adventure story? Heroes who fear nothing, children who face dragons, and little fearless friends who can do anything! With music and storytelling, get ready for fairy tales that will give you strength and courage!

Storytelling by: Taxiarhis Beligiannis
Music by: Maria Ploumi

Cosmic Dust - New Territories
2025-05-28 19:00 - 22:00 | National Observatory of Athens, Lofos Nymphon, Athens, Athens, 118 10, Greece
Τhe historic National Observatory of Athens transforms into a terrain of celestial imagination and earthly matter, with a bold new exhibition by contemporary artist Lea Petrou. Titled Cosmic Dust / New Territories, the show presents a series of new site-specific works that inhabit and respond to Greece’s oldest scientific institution, an anchor of time, memory, and observation since 1842.

Curated and textually framed by Kostas Prapoglou, the exhibition draws inspiration from 19th-century German astronomer Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt, whose intricate lunar mappings and scientific pursuits form the basis for Petrou’s radical reinterpretation. Using materials such as ceramic, cotton thread, wool, clay, titanium, and marble, Petrou creates dialogues between past and present, the human and the planetary, the analytical and the emotional.

Exhibition days and times: Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 19.00 – 22.00

Antonia Kaouri Live
2025-05-28 20:00 - 23:00 | The City of Athens Gallery, Municipal Gallery of Athens, Athens, Athens, 104 36, Greece
One of the most enigmatic figures in the new Greek music scene, Antonia Kauri captivated audiences on The Voice with her seductive voice and later mesmerised them as the opening act at the sold-out Coldplay concerts. Now, at the This is Athens City Festival, she takes the stage at the Athens Municipality Art Gallery—a building with decades of history and a cultural hub for the city—for a live performance filled with mystery and electronic sounds that promise to surprise us.

Solo Exhibition: Valinia Svoronou - Clocks of the Tides
2025-05-29 11:00 - 20:00 | CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery, Chalkokondyli 19, Athens, Athens, 104 32, Greece
“Ah! That marvellous little thing – that fell into the sea – like a diamond slipped from the fingers of God. The abandoned pearl you long to place upon the alabaster neck of the beloved you adore.”

This passage from a book by Akilas Milas evokes the Princes’ Islands of the early 20th century as a jewel lost to the sea, a keepsake for a cherished beloved. Despite its old-fashioned phrasing, it conveys a powerful sense of a vanished place. Valinia Svoronou’s exhibition captures such moments—carried through intergenerational narratives, experienced by the artist and reshaped to reconcile with a time that is at once personal and collective, hazy and precise. Sculptural forms, notes and moving images become bulwarks in a world rich with memory: reflections from the Eastern Mediterranean, Athens, the Sea of Marmara and Asia Minor. These are moments of pause and re-formation—fragments of places remembered and reimagined.
