Athens is better known for its sun-bleached marbles than its emerald canopies, yet thread between the Doric columns and neoclassical façades and you’ll discover a city quietly unfolding its own Arcadia. From the National Garden – King Otto’s 38-acre folly of palms and pergolas behind Syntagma Square – to the scrub-scented switchbacks of the surrounding mountains, pockets of chlorophyll offer a momentary hush from the motorbike whir and café chatter below.

What follows is an edited itinerary of those retreats: shady lawns for afternoon reveries, wild hillsides perfumed with thyme, and miniature squares where a single jacaranda dyes the pavement violet. The ancients prescribed nature for equilibrium of mind and spirit; two millennia later, the prescription still holds.

Read more at Travel.gr/en