Kolonaki may be the city’s poshest neighbourhood, but there’s delicious irony in the fact that under Ottoman rule it was largely grazing lands.

Many of its earliest inhabitants chose to settle at the foot of Lycabettus hill because it reminded them of their mountain village. Kolonaki’s star may have waned in recent years, but it’s still the place moneyed Athenians go to shop and socialise. And just as the city’s centre of gravity has shifted so has Kolonaki, moving from Agios Dionysios to Kolonaki Square, with the cafés on its lower side and along Kapsali street siphoning off its cachet.

But Kolonaki never goes out of style—and is in fact reclaiming its own. The high street retailers that sprouted like weeds in the 1990s have beat a retreat, leaving space for a new crop of Greek designers to move in.

For local residents, Kolonaki is simply their neighbourhood. But for the rest of Athens, nay Greece, it is the capital of the city’s café culture and symbol of the booming 1980s. The mood is perfectly captured by a comedian’s catchphrase, Pame platia?, or “Shall we go to the square?”—meaning, very specifically, Kolonaki. But in this see-and-be-seen quarter, where you go for coffee is as important as with whom.

The fashion-minded crowd populates the cafés furthest from the square, on Milioni and Kapsali. Political movers-and-shakers down a quick espresso on the upper side, near Tsakalof, but settle in for longer meetings on the platia’s lower end. Brokering a business deal? You’re more likely to stake a seat on the block between Kanari and Koumbari. As for the city’s literati, their haunts are away from the platia itself at the cafés along Skoufa, near Agios Dionysios church.

A draped white silk chiton might be the first image that comes to mind when you think of traditional Greek dress, but folk costumes are far fancier and more varied. What Greeks wore has, since antiquity, communicated important social information such as someone’s village and marital status.

These clues are literally stitched into the headdresses, bodices, skirts, and shoes of the Museum of the History of Greek Costume. Even the fabrics, layering, and embroidery are part of this subtle code, which the signage helps you to decipher. Folk fashion doesn’t just reflect personal status: history is sewn into it too.

Cycladic costume shows a definite influence from the East, whereas 18th-century dress in the north had a Slavic air. As for the representative dress, the Amalia is named after Greece’s first queen, who adapted a Peloponnesian folk costume to suit the continental European taste for a snug bodice over a full skirt.

John Gennadius, an eminent diplomat and scholar, inherited two passions from his father: a love of books and a love of Greece. These fused in a collection of some 26,000 books which he donated to the American School of Classical Studies.

The library and its strolling grounds are as impressive as the collection. Entering, your eye will be drawn to the columns and the inscription from Isocrates over the door: “They are called Greeks those who share in our education”. Tilt back your head to take in details like the delicate inlay on the ceiling.

Indoors, there’s plenty to see, even when the library isn’t hosting an exhibition. The reading room by itself induces a hushed awe. Watercolours by Edward Lear and Lord Byron memorabilia are a bonus.