It’s a hot ticket for the creative types that have descended on Athens, many of them returning ex-pats like Tsampouraki. But for me, the true advantage of staying at the Shila was the chance to attend its Social Club, an invitation-only event that has since been relocated to Shila’s sister property, Mona, under the name Club Monamour. My suite - called the Dreamers - was decorated with original terrazzo floors, antiques and artisan-made pieces, and contemporary artwork, while its shop sells beautiful linen clothes by Lefko, a brand founded by a Singaporean-Greek couple who employ refugees and survivors of human trafficking. Like many businesses that comprise the new Athens vanguard, the Shila deftly balances elements of tradition and modernity. This six-room boutique property is a calm oasis of art and beauty that’s set in a 1920s Neoclassical townhouse in the Kolonaki district, a well-heeled enclave of steep streets at the base of Lycabettus Hill.
I hopped in a cab from the airport straight to the Shila Hotel. This time, I swore, I would pay little heed to its wealth of ancient ruins and concentrate instead on what has happened in the past few years. And so I decided to make a pilgrimage back to the fountainhead of Western culture. But word has been filtering out that Athens is rebounding with a gusto unseen since the days of Plato. I love an Acropolis view as much as the next person, but I was forced to agree with the general opinion of the city as a traffic-clogged, unlovable mess to be passed through as quickly as possible on the way to the islands. Twenty years ago, I spent weeks in Athens to research Pagan Holiday and The Naked Olympics, my two books on the classical Greek world. I could relate to Tsampouraki’s surprise. But if there is any real comparison, Tsampouraki insisted, it is to New York City in the 1980s: “It was dirty and difficult, but also incredibly creative. In 2017, he evolved the sentiment further, coining his most popular and pointed version: ATHENS IS THE NEW ATHENS. Sometime around 2015, Cacao Rocks started daubing walls with THIS IS NOT BERLIN as a form of protest.
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