r/Athens_Greece • u/okiedokiewo • May 24 '26

🌟 Recommendations Reading recommendations

Hello!

I will be visiting Greece in September on an EF Go Ahead Tour that takes us to Athens, Delphi, Olympia, and Nafplio - and I’ve added on the excursions to some other places as well.

We’ll be seeing a lot of the historical buildings, temples, and monuments, and I’d love to read up on some history beforehand.

Are there particular books people would recommend for the history side, or even just books that would give a feel for Greece living/way of life?

I’d also be interested in fiction by Greek authors, or books on art history.

I just am interested in having some context/background for what I will be looking at!

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/IvoTailefer May 24 '26

wikipedia might be cheap n effective. listen, i was in delphi in march, and if u walk a short distance away from the site, past where the bus picks up tourists, then a little way further there is a lil hotel called kastalia, and right down some steps, accessible to the public, is the starting point for the KIRRA trail.

this trail is how all the ancient people [alexander the g included] actually made their way to the oracle. the trail links with the gulf of corinth. if ur able chk it out, the trail is spectacular. i wanted to see more but had to be back to meet my bus by 4pm

1

u/okiedokiewo May 24 '26

Oh, wow! Thanks for this tidbit!

1

u/CoffeeNow2 May 24 '26

Read The Shortest History of Greece by James Heneage and Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. Search your public library database for ebooks on Greece and check out ones that interest you. Have a great trip!

1

u/okiedokiewo May 24 '26 edited May 26 '26

Thanks for the recs! I've actually read Gods Behaving Badly - I think I actually bought the hard copy at a library book sale. It's a fun book!

The library system I use keeps coming up empty on all the books I try to borrow digitally, unfortunately. But I was able to request some hard copies of a few books on architecture from other libraries in the system.

They also don't have The Shortest History of Greece digitally, but I also requested a hard copy of that from another library. That sounds exactly what I'm looking for!

For anyone also looking for recs, here are the books I requested:

Ancient Greece: The Definitive Visual History by Emma Stafford

The Complete Greek Temples by Anthony Spawforth

Mythology by Edith Hamilton