Press & Media
City of Athens launches the 2nd Athens City Festival
The celebration of spring in the city we love returns to Athens with more than 250 events throughout May.
The Athens City Festival is a pioneering project of the City of Athens with more than 250 events taking city by storm during the whole month of May. The 2023 Festival program offers a broad range of new and exciting cultural events that help visitors to explore Athens during street parties and performances, meet local creatives and curators of cool, mingle with Athenians and feel the heartbeat of the city.
The full-range of events offer new ways to experience the most recognizable spots of Athens as well as an incentive to discover some of the less explored parts of the city.
The full program of events (online at cityfestival.thisisathens.org) includes concerts, open air film screenings, and DJ sets in unexplored parts of the city. The schedule of community events includes a skateboarding tournament, ceramic festival, group bike rides, and tours of the mythical hills of Athens as well as the city’s underground tunnels and shelters. There are dozens of activities designed for children, including educational workshops in museums, games and treasure hunts that are a fun way for kids to get to know Athens.
The Athens City Festival has been a blast since it started on May 1 with an all-day picnic at the park of Plato's Academy. The mesmerizing concert by The Cinematic Orchestra on May 6 was the largest event in the history of the Athens City Festival with more than 6,000 people attending the concert in Kotzia Square.
The festival continues until the end of May with more traditional and modern music, sport and gastronomy events spread across the 129 neighbourhoods of Athens. The landmark closing event takes place on the “balcony of Athens” at the top of Mount Lycabettus, where later this summer the City of Athens will inaugurate the nearby open-air theatre that is being renovated after decades of abandonment.
The Mayor of Athens Kostas Bakoyannis said: “We are joining forces and becoming one. This festival is innovative because it is for the whole city, for all of Athens, from one end of the city to the other. When we started last year, we knew we were taking a risk, but the event was a huge success with participation exceeding 50,000 people. This year, we return stronger, with more than 110 organizations taking part in the 2nd Athens City Festival.”
The development and organization of the Athens City Festival is the result of the close cooperation of the City of Athens Development and Destination Management Agency with many groups and foundations: public and private museums, galleries, cultural institutions, non-profits, musicians, singers, educators and tour leaders. The schedule developed from an open call for proposals issued early this year that invited groups to develop new events or include their scheduled actions in the framework of the festival. The result is an exciting open program with more than 250 events of all kinds, spread across the city.
The Athens City Festival is also being promoted internationally – especially in nearby city break markets such as France, Germany, Italy and Britain – in order to attract visitors to Athens before the start of the summer season.
Some of the events include:
- Get in key with the first edition of the three-day Piano City Athens that takes place all across town, including 70 open house concerts;
- Go for the classics and choose between a Beethoven concert, or a retrospective on iconic Greek folk singer Lakis Halkias, both at the Olympia Theatre Maria Callas;
- Gamify your visit with a hybrid treasure hunt by Athens-based tech startup Narratologies;
- Do not miss out on one of the biggest parties of the season at Varvakios, the Central Food Market of Athens;
- Savour a wine-pairing multi-course dinner at the Acropolis Museum;
- Plan your own multi-course street food menu at the Athens Street Food Festival, the country's biggest food court fiesta.
- Bust a move in Thissio to the hip-hop showcase of Sky Vector Music, the Antetokounmpo brothers-owned record label;
- Pedal for a healthy mind in a healthy body at a guided bike tour around the city’s galleries and exhibition spaces
The detailed program is available in English and Greek: https://cityfestival.thisisathens.org/
