Some rooftops have a view. A for Athens has a monument. From the top-floor terrace of this small hotel above Monastiraki Square, the Acropolis rises almost directly in front of you, floodlit after dark, close enough to feel like a private backdrop rather than a distant landmark. It is the cleanest Parthenon sightline of any bar in the city, and it has made A for Athens the default Athenian sunset booking for well over a decade. What earns it second place on our list of the world's best rooftop bars, though, is that the drinks and the kitchen have grown up to match the view.
The view: face to face with the Acropolis
Everything here is organised around the rock. The terrace faces the Acropolis dead-on, with Plaka's tiled roofs tumbling away below, the ancient Agora and the Thissio quarter unfolding to one side, and the general sweep of the Athens skyline beyond. The World's 50 Best Bars, which lists A for Athens on its Discovery guide, calls it "one of the city's finest views of the ancient UNESCO landmark," and independent rooftop guides describe standing "pretty much face to face to the Acropolis." Come at golden hour and you get the marble turning honey-coloured, then the moment the floodlights snap on and the Parthenon glows against a darkening sky, the single image most visitors carry home from Athens, delivered with a cocktail in hand.
Because the view is the whole proposition, where you sit matters. The prized tables are the ones along the front rail, looking straight at the monument; ask for one when you book, and aim for a slot in the half-hour before sunset so you catch both the daylight panorama and the illuminated night version from the same seat. The rooftop is part open-air terrace and part indoor bar, so it works in most weather, and unusually for an Athenian rooftop it stays open year-round rather than shutting for the winter.
The setting: a small hotel on Monastiraki Square
A for Athens sits on top of a compact boutique hotel at 2-4 Miaouli Street, directly above Monastiraki Square and its metro station, one of the most connected corners of the old city, where the flea market, Plaka, Psyrri and the ancient sites all meet. Officially it trades as "A for Athens Cocktail Bar & Restaurant," and the rooftop has been given a sleek, minimal refresh that keeps the focus firmly outward, on the view, rather than on any interior gimmickry. That location does a lot of quiet work: you can walk here in minutes from the Acropolis, the Agora or the metro, drink at the best vantage point in the neighbourhood, and then step straight back down into the buzz of Monastiraki and Psyrri.
The cocktails: an Odyssey in a glass
The drinks list is where A for Athens separates itself from the city's many view-only terraces. Rather than a generic run of spritzes, the cocktail menu is themed on Homer's Odyssey, "the inspiration of our menu comes from the ten-year wanderings of Odysseus until he reached Ithaca," as the bar puts it, with drinks named for the characters and trials of the epic. It is a genuine, well-executed conceit, and 50 Best singles out the storytelling list for praise.
The serves back up the concept. There is a Stormy Martini built on Gin Mare, fino sherry and Talisker Storm with a savoury note of seaweed; a rum-forward "Polyphemus the Cyclops" blending three rums with citrus, homemade orgeat and Peychaud's bitters; a "Circe's Potion" clarified milk punch; and lighter classics-with-a-twist such as "Calypso," a French 75 riff with hibiscus-infused gin and prosecco. For something rooted in place, look to the house "A for Athens Cobbler," made with Skinos mastiha, the pine-resinous liqueur of the Greek islands, white wine and a peach shrub. (If you have seen an "A Athens Spritz" listed elsewhere, note it is not on the bar's own menu; the genuine house drink is the mastiha Cobbler.) A more approachable "Pop Libations" section covers the crowd-pleasers, and there is a proper zero-proof list too. Cocktails land around €10–15, fair for a rooftop of this profile.
The food and wine: modern Greek, all day
A for Athens is a full restaurant as well as a bar, and it runs from morning to night. The day starts with a Greek-products breakfast buffet, moves through brunch, and settles in the evening into a modern-Greek, Mediterranean menu of shareable plates built on fresh Greek ingredients, the kind of cooking that turns a sunset drink into a lingering dinner without anyone quite deciding to stay. The wine programme leans hard into Greek bottles, with sommelier service and a place on the Star Wine List, so it is a genuine option for exploring Assyrtiko and other native grapes with the Acropolis in front of you. You do not have to eat to enjoy the rooftop, but the kitchen is good enough that many people do.
Atmosphere: the canonical Athens sundowner
For all its ambition, A for Athens is fundamentally a place to arrive at dusk, order one very good drink, and watch the light change on the oldest monument in Europe. The mood is relaxed and cosmopolitan rather than exclusive, a mix of locals marking an occasion and travellers who have done their homework, and the minimal design keeps every eye pointed at the Acropolis. It has become such a fixture of the golden-hour ritual that booking ahead for sunset is essentially mandatory in high season; walk up at 8pm on a summer evening without a reservation and you will likely be admiring the view from the queue.
The neighbourhood: drink here, then go deeper
Part of what makes A for Athens rank so highly is what surrounds it. It sits on the edge of Monastiraki and Psyrri, one of the densest and most exciting bar districts in Europe, which means the rooftop works best as the opening act of a night rather than the whole show. Some of the finest cocktail bars in Athens are within a few minutes' walk, you can drink in the fading light here, then descend into the lanes for the next round. Explore the acclaimed The Clumsies, a regular on the World's 50 Best Bars list, the historic distillery-bar Brettos in Plaka with its wall of backlit bottles, or the cult multi-level Six d.o.g.s hidden off Monastiraki. Few rooftops on this list hand you a better second, third and fourth stop.
Planning your visit
A for Athens is open from early morning through late into the night, with the kitchen and cocktail bar running into the evening and later hours at weekends; exact closing times shift by day and season, so it is worth confirming directly if you are timing a late visit. Reservations are strongly recommended for sunset, and if the view is your priority you should specifically request a table on the front rail. The dress code is casual, the rooftop is open year-round, and the setting, directly above Monastiraki metro, makes it one of the easiest premium rooftops in the city to reach. Order the mastiha Cobbler or a drink from the Odyssey list, and time your booking for the half-hour before the sun drops behind the hills.
A little history, and a menu that keeps evolving
A for Athens has been part of the city's rooftop story for well over a decade, long enough to have shaped what visitors expect an Athenian sundowner to be. In that time it has resisted the temptation to rest on the Acropolis view, repeatedly reworking its drinks. The Odyssey list is the concept it is best known for, but the bar has continued to iterate, a more recent menu edition trades under a "hearts versus mind" theme, posing the question of whether a drink should be chosen with emotion or logic. That willingness to keep rewriting the list, rather than printing the same four crowd-pleasers forever, is the clearest sign that the people behind the bar take the cocktails as seriously as the postcard behind them.
The mastiha thread running through the drinks is worth dwelling on, because it roots the bar in Greece rather than in a generic international cocktail vocabulary. Mastiha, the aromatic resin of trees grown almost exclusively on the island of Chios, is one of the country's most distinctive flavours, and using it in the house Cobbler ties the glass to the same landscape as the view. It is the sort of detail that turns a pretty terrace into a genuine sense of place, you are not just drinking above Athens, you are drinking something that could only really be Athenian.
Best time to go
The honest answer is sunset, in almost any season. Athens enjoys long, warm evenings from late spring through early autumn, and on those nights the terrace is at its best in the window that straddles dusk: arrive forty-five minutes or so before the sun drops and you will watch the Acropolis move from daylight marble to floodlit gold from a single seat. Because that window is when everyone wants to be here, a reservation is close to essential in high season, and a specific request for a front-rail table is the difference between a good visit and the visit people photograph. Out of season the rooftop stays open, one of the reasons it ranks above so many summer-only terraces, and a bright winter afternoon, with the air clear and the crowds thinner, can be one of the most underrated times to come. Whenever you visit, treat the first drink as the main event and let the light do the work; if you are hungry, roll straight from cocktails into the modern-Greek menu without leaving your view.
A practical note on getting here: the rooftop sits directly above Monastiraki metro, where the blue and green lines meet, so it is one of the easiest premium rooftops in Athens to reach without a taxi, a genuine advantage in a city where evening traffic can be punishing, and another small reason it has stayed at the top of so many Athens lists for so long.
What to order
Start with the house "A for Athens Cobbler," the mastiha-white-wine-and-peach-shrub drink that most directly captures the place; it is bright, resinous and unmistakably Greek, and it makes an ideal first glass while the light is still up. From there, follow your mood: the savoury, seaweed-laced Stormy Martini for something dry and serious, the three-rum Polyphemus if you want the Odyssey theme in full voice, or the hibiscus-and-prosecco Calypso for a lighter, celebratory pour as the floodlights come on. Non-drinkers are genuinely looked after by the zero-proof list rather than fobbed off with a soda. If you decide to stay for food, and many do, treat the modern-Greek small plates as a way to keep the table and the view a while longer, and lean on the sommelier to steer you through Greek wine by the glass. However you build the order, the ritual is the same one that has drawn people up here for years: one very good drink, timed to the exact moment the Acropolis lights up.
The verdict
A for Athens could have coasted forever on its view; the Acropolis alone would fill the tables. Instead it has paired the best Parthenon sightline in the city with a genuinely creative, story-driven cocktail list, a serious Greek kitchen and wine programme, and a location that plugs straight into Athens' best nightlife. That combination, an unbeatable view that is no longer the only reason to come, is exactly why it sits at number two on our ranking. Book a rail table for golden hour, order something from the Odyssey, and let one of the great monuments of the ancient world do the rest. For a first drink in Athens, a last one, or the single view most likely to end up framed on a wall back home, there is still nowhere in the city quite like it, and few first drinks anywhere begin an evening so well.