June 20, 2009 seems like a good starting point to be searching for the “ground zero” of the tourism boom in the central Athens neighborhood of Koukaki. But is it the only one? The inauguration of the (new) Acropolis Museum 15 years ago disrupted the pendulum of the capital’s attractions, which until then swung somewhat monotonously and predictably between the always popular monuments of the Sacred Rock and the struggling – in terms of visitor numbers – National Archaeological Museum quite some distance away. Suddenly, the main pole of tourist interest, also aided by the so-called unification of archaeological sites, which provided residents and visitors with an unprecedentedly extensive and beautiful walkway below the Acropolis, took off.
The new, monothematic museum, designed by the internationally renowned French-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, attracted about 10,000 visitors daily from the moment it opened its gates. In the first 11 months of its operation alone, the number of tickets sold at this new Athens destination matched those sold in 2023, the greatest year so far in the history of Greek tourism. This wasn’t just a museum; it was a tourism whirlwind.
The rest is more or less well-known: The residential hinterland behind the museum, the neighborhoods of Makrygianni and Koukaki, gradually evolved into the informal mecca of the fledgling Greek short-term rental industry. Available rental properties became desperately scarce, causing prices to skyrocket to.
