Getting to Ilisia, from wherever you are staying

Ilisia is one of those Athens districts that almost every visitor goes past and almost none go into. It sits east of the centre, behind the line of embassies and museums along the big avenue, and because nothing in it is on a tourist itinerary, most people never have a reason to turn off.

This is a short orientation for anybody who now does have a reason. Where it is, what is around it, and the three or four ways of getting there depending on where you woke up.

Where Ilisia actually is

Draw a line east from Syntagma along Vasilissis Sofias and you pass the Benaki, the Cycladic, the War Museum and the National Gallery. Ilisia begins behind them and runs back from the avenue into a grid of residential streets. The Hilton Athens sits on its edge and the Megaron, the Athens Concert Hall, sits on the other.

Inside that grid the character changes completely. The avenue is monumental and the quarter behind it is not: apartment blocks, small squares, a lot of trees, people walking dogs. The university hospital complex and part of the university itself are here too, which is why the daytime population skews young and the streets are busy at hours that surprise people.

We are on Brazil Square, Plateia Vrazilias, at Laodikias 16 and Nimfeou 1, postcode 115 28. It is one of the small squares, on the corner, facing the park.

What is around it, if you have an hour

The avenue side of the quarter is unusually dense with museums, and if you are making a day of it they are within a short walk of one another. The Benaki, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the War Museum and the National Gallery sit almost in a row along Vasilissis Sofias, which is a better cluster than most cities manage.

Check their opening days before you set out rather than after. They do not all keep the same ones, and an afternoon built around a closed door is a long afternoon.

The practical point for anybody planning to eat is that all of them are on the same side of the quarter as we are. A museum in the afternoon and a table afterwards is a walk of somewhere between five and fifteen minutes, not a journey across the city.

It works in reverse too. If you are here for lunch and have time afterwards, the museums are the obvious use of it, and you will not need transport to reach a single one of them.

By metro, which is the answer most of the time

Evangelismos, on line 3, is the nearest station, and from there it is about ten minutes on foot through Ilisia. Line 3 is the useful one for this: it runs through Syntagma, which is one stop away, and it continues all the way out to the airport.

That airport connection is worth knowing if you are arriving or leaving on the same day as a meal. You do not need to change trains, and you do not need to think about the traffic on the avenue, which at the wrong hour is considerable.

The walk from Evangelismos is flat and straightforward. You come up from the station onto the avenue, turn away from the centre, and work back through the residential streets. Ten minutes is a real ten minutes rather than an optimistic one.

On foot, if you are already nearby

From the Hilton it is five minutes. From the Megaron it is also five minutes, which makes this one of the few places near the concert hall where the kitchen is still working after a performance ends.

From Kolonaki it is a longer but pleasant walk, downhill in one direction and uphill on the way back, which is worth remembering at two in the morning. From Pangrati you are coming across rather than along, and the two neighbourhoods are closer than the map suggests.

If you are staying in Plaka or around the Acropolis, walking is possible but it is not really a walk, it is a commitment. Take the metro.

By taxi, and by car

Every driver in Athens knows Plateia Vrazilias by name, so the square is the thing to say rather than the street. Laodikias and Nimfeou will also work, but the square is faster.

If you are driving, the thing to know in advance is that Ilisia is residential and the kerb belongs to residents from early evening. There is a garage about eighty metres from the door that is open around the clock. The contact page carries the address, the map and the full opening hours in one place.

Or do not come at all

There is a version of this where you stay where you are. We are on e-food and Wolt across Ilisia, Pangrati and the streets nearby, and the delivery window is shorter than the opening hours, so it is worth checking the time before you plan around it.

But the room is most of the point, particularly in the afternoon when it is quiet and the terrace is in the light. If you are close enough to walk, walk.