Attention: Museum and site hours in Greece
 

We just completed a wonderful 2 weeks in Athens, Santorini, Central Greece and the Peloponnese. This forum was wonderful in helping us to plan our trip. In addition, we had the Eyewitness Guide to Greece. I wanted to warn other travellers that the hours listed in the guidebooks aren't necessarily correct. We found throughout our trip that although April is listed as summer hours, all of the sites and museums were operating on winter hours, which meant everything closed at 3pm. When I asked ticket people when summer hours would begin, they said , "I don't know, maybe after Easter (end of april), maybe not." Apparently it is up to the government and is somewhat random, according to a tour guide. One ticket person even told me Mycenae was closing at 3, but Ancient Corinth was open until 7, which turned out to be wrong. The National Arch. Museum in Athens closed at 3pm on Sat. and Sun. Hope this helps others since we got caught so many times with not enough time to see everything.

We were there a few weeks before you, and I'll second this point (we mentioned the same in our trip report). We found our guidebooks to have conflicting or wrong information in some cases. By the time we got to Athens at the end of our trip, we learned to have our hotel call to check times (e.g., the National Archaeological Museum).

We were there in late April - mid May in 2006 and my notes indicate that the museums began summer hours after May 1st, the Labor Day holiday.

Ditto that.

It's also wise to check if sites are open on holidays.

We are in Heraklion, Crete as I write.We planned to visit the palace at Knossos only to find that they are shut today.

This inspite of confiming with the people at the front desk at the hotel (Hotel Lato).

cheers

This is still of concern. We are in Athens right now....the Archaeological museum is STILL on winter hours, as of the 30th of May! Open 1pm - 7:30 pm on Monday, other days open only 8:30 to 3pm. So we got a grand total of 30 minutes in there today, our only day.

Ditto on Knossos. I had *four* guidebooks (Rough Guide to Crete, Cadogan Greek Islands, Let's Go Greece and Eyewitness Greek Islands). All of them had slightly different information re: hours of Knossos but every single one of them said it would be open til at least 6pm. Nope, it closes every day at 3:00, at least until further notice. Another site we missed.

A guide while we were on Naxos said that apparently business right now is half that of this time last year; maybe the Greek government just doesn't think there are enough people around to warrant the extended hours yet. Whatever the reason it sure pissed me off, so hopefully this thread will protect someone else.

The Archaeological museum at least has a website that you can consult before your visit, hopefully it will be updated as soon as the hours change. Looks like from http://odysseus.culture.gr/ you can see most sites.

Just wondering if anyone has been to Greece recently and can update on the hours of the sites?
We are planning a return trip for next May (2009) and I'm curious.

I had been planning to post this but this is a good thread for it.
Regards, Walter

The Guardian
'Run-down heritage sites embarrass the Greeks'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...reece.heritage

TexasAggie...

What has happened this year with
site hours may not affect you next
year... or it might... you just
never know in Greece!

I was in Greece in early May and
Greek friends said the short hours
were due to a lack of money in
the Cultural Ministry's budget to
allow for longer opening times. I believe this is now fixed but who knows if it will be a problem or not in 2009?

Rob

Thanks for the replies, and Walter, thanks for the link to the article.
We just booked tickets for May 6 - 23. We've got a lot of time with this trip, so we'll just plan a leisurely pace that will allow us to adjust to shorter site/museum hours if they are still an issue.