Nostos, or νόστος in ancient Greek, roughly translates to a ‘homecoming’ with specific reference to the return of Odysseus and other Greek heroes of the Trojan War. In a slightly different context, the Summer Nostos Festival at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre seeks to bring us all ‘back home’ to those timeless days of peac...
Read moreWHAT: A thrilling treat for literature lovers as the award-winning scribe Ian McEwan - author of best-selling works such as Atonement and the Booker-prize winning Amsterdam - shares his writing process in his first Athens appearance, as part of "Athens 2018 - World Book Capital". In a talk titled “The Literary Concept of Self”, the celebrated Briti...
Read more“You should see the landscape of Greece. It would break your heart.” -- Lawrence Durrell The canon of Lawrence Durrell – the cherished English poet, Grecophile and author now back in vogue thanks to the popular television series The Durrells – is about to be expanded by one, 28 years after his death. Admirers of Durrell, whose bes...
Read moreWhile the modern Athens metropolis continues to shape-shift and evolve like a living, breathing entity, the voracious Athenian appetite for cultural symposia remains an unbreakable connection between ancient and present times. Each summer, the Athens Festival serves as a prism to celebrate the great scope and timbre of this artistic compu...
Read moreMany consider that her colour-popping, dizzying creations influenced Andy Warhol. Without doubt, the avant garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was a forebearer of the Pop Art movement. The still-spritely 89-year-old with the signature flaming wig has exhibited hallucinatory works such as “Infinity Nets” and her "Dots Obsessions" series (Kusama feti...
Read moreIn Greece for the summer and want to drink like a local? How about trying one of the many indigenous born-and-brewed beers? Athens Insider plays beertender and rounds up a few of the coolest beers to try this summer. From Athens to Peloponnese, Crete or Santorini, Greece prides itself in a whole range of lagers, ales and beers bursting wi...
Read moreYannis Dramis, a born and bred Athenian, re-discovers his native city as he captures Athens’ spray-canned facades where nightly, young artists such as “Sonke” vie for recognition, credibility and space on the city’s walls. “I have always liked to walk through decadent parts of the city, places, where ‘normalcy’, or a sense of ...
Read moreThe Big Beard might finally be on its way out as the compulsory millennial youth prop. But its potency as a cultural and religious marker will always endure, say anarchic British design duo Gilbert & George. The prodigious pair have cemented this all-pervasive hirsute legacy in their latest primal exhibition The Beard Pictures, to mar...
Read moreMary Katrantzou – one of Greece’s biggest overseas success stories – bolted out of the gates in 2008, pioneering a thrilling new look for women, typified by bold digital prints and structural silhouettes. She quickly became one of the most talked-about designers with Rihanna, Sarah Jessica Parker and Michelle Obama among her high-profile ...
Read moreWant to grab a coffee? Get your caffeine fix with art, sculptures and music for company at these four great museum cafes. Photos by Marie-Irène Moschona Acropolis Museum With a cafe on the ground floo...
Read moreAn essential element of the streetscape of every Greek city and town, the corner kiosk’s or periptero’s unique contribution to the rhythm and character of Greek daily life cannot be undermined. Open until the wee hours of the night, the periptero is where one stocks up on cigarettes and newspapers (strung out like laundry and ...
Read moreInsider’s linguistics whiz and cultural commentator John Carr provides our readers with a fool-proof guide to avoiding verbal offence here in the Great Olive Belt. Visitors and newcomers to Greece are often under the impression that the Greeks, being a voluble, open and highly expressive people, have little use for the kind of...
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