Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece located on the Attica Peninsula at the Mediterranean Sea. The city lies in a plain surrounded by mountains and the Saronic Gulf in the west.
While the municipal area is about 8 kilometers from the sea and has a population of 640,000 inhabitants, the greater metropolitan area is much larger and stretches from the surrounding mountains to the sea. The population of the metropolitan area reached around 3.15 million in 2022, almost one third of the overall Greek population of approximately 10.5 million.
Overview
Athens is a historic Mediterranean city and has held a prominent reputation in the fields of philosophy, arts, and sciences since antiquity. During the Second World War, as Greece was invaded by German forces and occupied by the Axis powers, the city of Athens suffered severe hardships with crumbling industry, agriculture and infrastructure, as well as the deadly famine that killed nearly 45,000 peiople in Athens and Piraeus.
Greek resistance movements gradually grew stronger within Athens and around Greece, leading up to the significant Dekemvriana (“December events”) battle fought in Athens between Greek communist fighters and the Greek government, supported by the British troops. The ensuing Greek Civil War 1946-1949 exacerbated the destruction and displacement in Athens.
In the post-war years, Athens saw rapid urbanization with large migrations from rural areas. The incoming middle and working-class social residents were housed in the urban centre through the antiparochi or flats-for-land approach– a bottom up barter system that allowed a builder or contractor to construct a building on a plot in exchange for an agreed number of flats. The apartment blocks constructed through the antiparochi model are called polykatoikies, which dominate the skyline of Athens today.
Between 1970–1990, the suburbanization trend in Athens led to the East–West division of the city, with large numbers of high‐ and middle‐class groups moving to the suburbs in the north‐east and south‐east parts whereas low-income and working-class groups remained in the western part.1 In 2004, Athens hosted the Olympic Games which spurred much of the city’s urban regeneration and infrastructure projects.
Map of Athens
Source
Climate risk
Athens is one of Europe’s worst impacted cities by climate change, with an increase in the average temperature by 1.5 °C over the 30-year period between 1991 to 2020.
Athens has a typical Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers averaging around 33 °C during the day, and mild, wet winters with temperatures reaching about 13 °C. In recent years, heatwaves have become longer, more frequent, and more intense. The most severe heatwave occurred in 2023, lasting 15 days and reaching a maximum temperature of 43.4 °C in some suburbs.
To better assess the risks, the Greek government is using an algorithm that analyzes local historical meteorological and mortality data to project the impact of heat on human health. The country has also begun categorizing and naming heatwaves—similar to the way floods and hurricanes are named—as seen with the “Cleon” heatwave of July 2023, to emphasize their seriousness.
A typical polikatoikia facade and apartment floor plan.
Source: Bloomberg
Climate adaptation policy
The Municipality of Athens has taken steps to create heat awareness which include mobile alerts for citizens to stay indoors during extreme temperatures.
It established a ‘Heatwave Line” helpline connected to the municipal clinics with information and support for heatwaves, and launched the EXTREMA Global mobile application with real-time personalized risk information during hot summer days. In 2021, Athens became the first European city to appoint a Chief Heat Officer to coordinate measures for heat relief.
The city is also providing heat preparedness training for employees in the municipal health department.3 In June 2025, the Municipality announced the creation of 7 seven air-conditioned public spaces that will function as Friendship Clubs to provide heat relief across the city, as part of its broader heat preparedness plan. These clubs are located in the neighborhoods of Kypseli, Kolokynthou, Ampelokipi, Aghios Pavlos, Agios Eleftherios, Neos Kosmos and Votanikos.
As Athens suffers from a serious lack of green spaces, this exacerbates the effects of the urban heat island effect (UHI), a phenomenon where dense infrastructure leads to significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas. The city of Athens has implemented urban greening efforts such as creating pocket parks in streets to mitigate the UHI effects, as well as using water from a 2,000-year-old aqueduct to expand the city’s green footprint and shade cover.
Migration history
After the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish conflict and the population exchange agreement, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox were forced to resettle in Greece.
Many of these made Athens their home, nearly doubling its population. Some of the refugees lived in state-organized refugee settlements, while the majority lived in self-built districts.Since the 1990s, migration to Greece is shaped by a combination of long-term labor migration and recent humanitarian crises, making it both a destination and a transit country in European migration flows. Athens also experienced significant out-migration as thousands of Greeks left the country due to the financial crisis of 2007–2008, marking the longest recession of any advanced mixed economy to date.
Percentage of residents by nationality in apartment buildings in Athens.
Source: Athens Social Atlas
Current snapshot
Presently, Albanians account for the largest migrant group in Athens, representing almost 50% of non-Greek nationals, followed by Pakistanis (6%), Romanians (4.9%), Bulgarians (4.5%), Georgians (2.9%) and Syrian refugees (1.4%). Athens has also received arrivals of refugees by sea from Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East. Most migrants live in the inner-city neighborhoods where housing is older and more affordable, such as Kypseli, Patissia, Metaxourgeio and Victoria, while refugees and asylum–seekers are usually placed in camps further away from the city center or outside of the city. In recent years, many migrants have been pushed out of central Athens due to gentrification, rising housing costs, and targeted evictions. Neighborhoods like Exarchia and Metaxourgeio, once affordable and diverse, have seen increased real estate investment and state-led regeneration, making them less accessible to low-income residents. Police raids and the closure of migrant squats have further displaced these communities to the urban periphery or camps, deepening their social and economic marginalization.
Some migrant communities are concentrated in certain areas. For example, Turkish migrants mostly live along the southern coast in Palaio Faliro, Alimos, and Nea Smyrni, while Iraqis tend to live in Peristeri and Egaleo. Filipinos are mainly located in Ampelokipi, where the fillipino community has settled since the 1990s and in wealthy suburbs, where many Filipino women work in domestic help. Pakistanis and Indians mostly live in the rural peripheral areas and along highway routes due to employment in agriculture and logistics.