The Plaka

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Once you are in Greece, a number of types of guides are available for purchase at local kiosks, or at the entrance of sites. Below, I give examples of 4 types of guides. Each is to illustrate a type. You should know, however, that you cannot count on arriving at a site and picking up a comprehensive walking guide to the place. The sort of thing where there are numbered signs and a guide book with descriptions for each sign just does not exist in Greece.

Types of guides reviewed here include:
High quality guides to sites and museums
Locally produced guides to islands and areas
Shopping and accommodation guides
Specialized monographs

High quality guides to sites and museums

Mycenae-Epidaurus	National Museum Semni Karouzou	Ancient Corinth Nicos Papahatzis		Mt. Athos
These guides, part of an extensive series from Ekodotike Athenon, represent a good compromise between scholarship and popular interest. These guides combine a large number of pictures in a 100 slick-paper pages with a serious text describing the site or region and its history. Other guides in this series cover places like Mystras, and museums such as the the Herakleion Museum. These guides are often available in several languages. Price is 3,000-5,000 drachmas.

	Locally produced guides to islands and areas Example: Tinos: Today and yesterday Michalis toubis Editions Athens
Almost every place will have a guide like this. It gives the history and photos of a region or island, but it differs from the first example in that its text and pictures are shaded more towards beaches and shopping. Sometimes the text will be overblown in its praises for the utter incredibility of whatever place it is promoting, but that can be a bit fun.

Shopping and accommodation guides

Examples: Panorama Mykonos Guide	Patmos Summertime Guide	Aigialia regional guide
These are pure advertisements, with a dash of history. Typically free, they often list hotels (but with no real information other than address phone, and class). Mostly it is a series of advertisements for stores, restaurants, hotels and the like. This can be entertaining, and provides a nice souvenir, but there little non-commercial information here.

	Specialized monographs Example: The Athenian Agora: A short Guide American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1983 200 Drachma, in 1986
These are genuine academic pamphlets. There is a whole series on the Athenian Agora, and I've seen similar items for other sites. The text is dry and sometimes difficult to read, but it provides detailed study of art, buildings, or issues about an ancient site.