Is this the most Instagram worthy neighbourhood of Athens?

Anafiotika – I would venture to call a post-modern Castle town – under the watchful eye of the Acropolis, is a well-hidden neighbourhood that it’s worth discovering. White washed alleys barely allowing two people abreast and steps carved by time. A few inhabitants, like actors in a story that’s taking place in the past. Bougainvilleas and flowers, bushy basils, enough for all the pesto in the world, cheerful cats that stretch languidly under the Attica sun. Anafiotika is not amenable to words, but you can discover it by walking.

A few things we know

• There are approximately 45 houses in Anafiotika. There were more but they were demolished in the 70s, when the settlement was termed illegally built.
• The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen writes in the book “Traveling in Greece”: “A few black families, slaves from the times of the Ottoman rule, emerged from their low, earthen houses”. During the Ottoman rule, the area was named “Black Stones”, as it had the houses of the slaves from Africa.
• Although in 1834 the area had been characterised an archeological zone, forbidding any rebuilding, human canniness “disobeying”, laid the first stone. The picturesque neighbourhood was born around 1860 by two traditional mason builders. George Damigos and Markos coming from the barren Anafi island to participate in the building of Otto’s palace, built the first two non-zoned small houses here. From these two masons began the building of the neighbourhood named Anafiotika.