Varvakios Agora is where Athens does its actual food shopping, and it is the best place in the city to buy things worth carrying home. Not fridge magnets — oregano that smells like a hillside, mountain tea picked in Evia, mastiha crystals from Chios, saffron, thyme honey, sacks of Kastoria giant beans. This guide covers the market as a shopping destination: what to buy, what it costs, where the locals actually go, and the customs rules that decide whether your purchases make it through your home airport or into a bin. For the wider picture of buying in the city, see our complete Athens shopping guide.
One thing to settle first. The covered halls — the meat market and the fish market — are the spectacle. The shopping is on the streets around them. If you are travelling and cannot cook, the halls are a twenty-minute walk-through and the real business happens on Evripidou.
What Varvakios Agora Actually Is
Officially it is the Central Municipal Market of Athens. Nobody calls it that. It is Varvakios, and it occupies the whole block bounded by Evripidou, Aiolou, Sofokleous and Athinas, at Athinas 42, roughly halfway between Monastiraki and Omonia.
The decision to build came in 1876 and work started in 1878, but the money ran out and the half-finished hall sat idle until a fire destroyed the old market in August 1884 and forced the issue. It opened in 1886, designed by Ioannis Koumelis, with the glass-and-metal roof that still covers it. It survived a proposal during the junta years to knock it down for a multi-storey block, and it came through a €1.5 million renovation that rebuilt the cold rooms, replaced the lighting and put in new awnings.
The name is contested, which is more interesting than a settled answer would be. One account says it honours Ioannis Varvakis, the national benefactor whose donation helped fund the building. The other — argued in the Greek press — is that the donation story simply is not true, and the market is called Varvakios because it stood next to the Varvakeio School, since demolished. Varvakis himself is worth thirty seconds: born on Psara, a trader who turned pirate, fought at Chesme in 1770, was ennobled by Catherine the Great and granted the caviar concession at Astrakhan, becoming the first person to export preserved caviar. “Varvaki” is the Psariot word for a hawk. It was a childhood nickname for his sharp eyes and fierce temper, and he kept it.
Inside the 1886 building are the meat hall and, in the centre, the fish market — every arch a numbered shop. The fruit and vegetable market is separate, across Athinas on the pedestrianised Aristogeitonos and Armodiou.
Opening Hours, Honestly
The market trades Monday to Saturday and is closed on Sundays. Listings give the envelope as roughly 07:00 to 18:00, but real trading starts earlier — 06:00 is normal — and individual stalls wind down through the early afternoon. There is no official page publishing exact hours, so treat any precise time you read anywhere as approximate.
Go before noon. That is the advice from the city’s own accessibility guide and it is right. Everything is open, the produce is fresh, and the crowds have not yet reached the point where you cannot move.
There is one Sunday a year it opens: the Sunday before Clean Monday, when stalls trade through the night for the Lenten feast. Otherwise it follows the Greek public holiday calendar and closes on 1 January, 6 January, Clean Monday, 25 March, Orthodox Easter and Easter Monday, 1 May, Holy Spirit Day, 15 August, 28 October and 25–26 December.
The Evripidou shops keep normal Greek retail hours, which are their own puzzle: Monday and Wednesday roughly 09:00–15:00; Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 09:00–14:00 and then 17:30–21:00; Saturday 09:00–15:00. Central shops often skip the afternoon break. In August, individual shops may close for a week or two even though the market hall keeps going.
Evripidou Street: Where the Shopping Is
Evripidou runs along the market’s southern edge and it is the spice street. You smell it before you reach it.
Bahar, Evripidou 31, has traded since 1940 across two generations and stocks well over two thousand products, from Sichuan pepper and Madras curry to Cretan dittany and orange-blossom water. Elixirio at Evripidou 41 opened in 1959 and has a tea room on its mezzanine and handmade incense alongside the herbs. Hatzigeorgiou at Evripidou 37 dates to 1937. Myloi Achaias at Evripidou 33 is newer, opened in 2013, and carries more than forty flours — einkorn, rye, dinkel, multigrain, gluten-free — plus pasta from producers who mill their own.
A naming warning, because it trips people up. The shop at Evripidou 41 is Elixirio, at elixir.com.gr. A business called Elixir at elixir.gr is a different company in Crete. Bahar’s own site carries a similar warning about shops trading under its name elsewhere.
For cured meat and cheese, Miran at Evripidou 45 was founded in 1922 by the Kourounlian family, Armenian refugees, and is still run by the founder’s grandsons. Beef and buffalo pastourma, Armenian soutzouki, sausages. Ta Karamanlidika tou Fani, also on Evripidou, sells handmade Karamanli pastirma in beef, sheep and camel, matured soutzouki, and a long list of rare aged cheeses. For cheese specifically, Karatzas at Athinas 57 has been going since 1930 and carries the Greek PDO range properly — this is the one to go to if you want a serious cheese conversation.
Beyond the spice and deli shops: Petros at Evripidou 46 for pulses out of sacks in a basement — Kastoria giant beans, Prespa beans, Florina chandres, Domokos lentils. Karpoi ton Angelon at Evripidou 31–33 roasts its nuts on site. Ariana on Theatrou for olives and pickles. And for non-food, Pasialis on Pallados sells baskets in every size, hung across the shopfront.
What to Actually Buy, and What It Costs
Prices below were taken from shop price lists in September 2026. They move, but the ratios hold.
Dried oregano is the single best thing to carry home from Athens. It weighs nothing, it is legal everywhere, and it is absurdly cheap here: around €1.40 per 100g for Trikala oregano, €2.30 for a Peloponnese bunch. The same herb in a British or American supermarket costs several times that for a fraction of the quantity and a fraction of the smell.
Mountain tea — tsai tou vounou, dried sideritis — is the other great buy, and it comes with a lesson in provenance. In the same shop, on the same shelf, Evia mountain tea runs about €3.00 per 100g and Volos mountain tea about €22.00. Same product category, seven times the price. Ask where it is from and decide accordingly. Cretan dittany sits around €3.20, sage leaves around €1.60.
Chios mastiha is the aromatic resin that grows only in twenty-four villages in southern Chios and legally nowhere else. It has held PDO status since 1997 and sits on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list. Expect around €18.00 per 100g. It is not cheap, it is not replicable at home, and it keeps.
Saffron needs care. Greek red saffron from Kozani — Krokos Kozanis — is PDO, hand-harvested, and takes something like fifty thousand stigmas to make 100g. A lot of what is sold in Athens is labelled simply “domestic” rather than carrying the PDO mark, and it sells for around €3.85 a gram. If you want the real thing, look for the PDO mark specifically and be sceptical of unmarked “Greek saffron”.
Honey divides sharply by type. Thyme honey is the prestige one and costs roughly two and a half times what pine honey does — around €36 per kilo against about €15 for pine, at retail. Both are excellent. Pine honey is darker, less floral and much better value.
Olive oil is the obvious buy and the one where we will not quote you a price, because verified Athens retail figures were not available at the time of writing and a made-up number helps nobody. Buy extra virgin, buy from a shop that will tell you the region and the harvest year, and buy a tin rather than a bottle — tins survive luggage.
Also worth the suitcase space: Florina peppers, capers, dried figs, pulses (giant beans in particular, which are hard to find abroad and cook beautifully), olive oil soaps at around €4.50 for 200g, and mastiha liqueur or a decent tsipouro.
The Customs Question — Read This Before You Spend
This is the section that saves money, and almost no Athens shopping guide includes it. Buying forty euros of pastourma and having it confiscated at your home airport is the most expensive mistake available at this market. Rules change; check your own government’s page before you fly.
United Kingdom. The position is currently severe. Because of ongoing animal disease outbreaks in the EU, travellers cannot bring most meat and all dairy products into Great Britain from the EU. That means no cheese of any kind — no feta, graviera, kefalotyri, kasseri — and no pork, beef, lamb, mutton, goat or products made from them, so no pastourma and no soutzouki. Fish, poultry, eggs and honey are still permitted, as are fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. This restriction is outbreak-driven and has no published end date, so check gov.uk before travelling.
United States. Condiments, vinegars, oils, packaged spices, honey, coffee and tea are generally admissible, so the herbs, mastiha, saffron and oil are fine — but everything must be declared. Cheese is better news than most people expect: solid hard and soft cheeses are exempt from the dairy restrictions, provided the cheese contains no meat and does not pour like a liquid. Feta, graviera and kefalotyri travel; ricotta-style spoonable cheeses do not. Meat is the problem. US rules bar most cattle, pork, sheep and goat meat from countries with certain animal diseases, and cured hams and salamis from several European countries are barred outright for travellers. Assume pastourma will be seized.
Canada. Fresh, dried and cured meats — explicitly including hams and sausages — are not permitted. Only commercially prepared, cooked, shelf-stable meat in a sealed jar, can or retort pouch gets through. On dairy, only pasteurised cheese is permitted from any country, up to 20 kg; unpasteurised cheese depends on the country’s disease status, and many artisanal Greek cheeses are unpasteurised, so ask before you buy. Honey to 20 kg, food-grade oils to 50 L, spices, tea and coffee to 20 kg. Eggs and egg products are barred. Declare everything.
Australia. Biosecurity here is the strictest in the world and everything must be declared on the Incoming Passenger Card. Vegetable and seed oils including olive oil are permitted, provided they are clean and free of seed, soil and plant debris. For meat, dairy, honey, seeds and nuts, check BICON, the official lookup at bicon.agriculture.gov.au, rather than relying on any travel guide including this one.
The liquids rule catches everyone. EU airport security counts oils, honey, pastes and liquid–solid mixtures as liquids. Olive oil, honey, tahini and olives in brine all qualify. In hand luggage they must be in containers of 100 ml or less inside a single one-litre transparent bag. A litre tin of olive oil in your carry-on will be taken off you. It goes in the hold, double-bagged and padded, or it does not go.
For duty-free allowances and reclaiming VAT on larger purchases, see our guide to tax-free shopping and VAT refunds in Athens.
How to Shop It
Everything is priced per kilo. Herb bunches are sold by the piece. Half a kilo of mixed anything is a normal order.
Haggling is not really the technique here, and we would rather say that plainly than invent a rule. Varvakios runs on relationship and repeat custom — these are family businesses passed down bloodlines, and the market’s own traders describe it that way. The local method is comparison, not confrontation: taste across several shops, find the ones that suit your palate and your budget, and buy from them. Tasting is expected. Point, ask, try.
Cards are accepted at most of the dry-goods shops on Evripidou and Athinas. Cash is still normal at the meat and fish counters. Carry both.
A few words help. Ena kilo is a kilo, miso kilo a half. Boro na dokimaso? — may I try? Poso kanei? — how much? For more, see our guide to useful Greek phrases.
Getting There, and Getting Around It
The nearest metro stations are Monastiraki, on Lines 1 and 3, and Omonia, on Lines 1 and 2. The market sits on Athinas roughly halfway between the two squares, and Athinas is just under a kilometre end to end, so either works. Panepistimio on Line 2 is a slightly longer walk from the east. Our Athens metro guide covers the lines in detail.
Access is ground level and the main aisles are wide, but it gets genuinely crowded — the city’s accessibility guide warns that a wheelchair user can find themselves immobilised by the crowds at peak times. The fish hall floor is wet and slippery. Manageable with a stroller before noon; unpleasant at one o’clock on a Saturday. Several of the Evripidou shops are small cramped rooms with a step at the door.
On safety: Athinas runs up into Omonia, and the streets immediately west — Sofokleous and Sokratous, which is exactly where some of the shops are — are the ones consistently named as best avoided after dark. During market hours this is a busy working commercial district and entirely fine. The honest advice is to come in the morning and not linger after the shutters come down. Pickpocketing in crowds is the realistic risk, as covered in our Athens safety guide.
Honest Verdicts
If you cannot cook on this trip, skip the halls and shop the streets. The meat and fish markets are magnificent to walk through and useless to you. Everything portable is on Evripidou, Sofokleous and Athinas.
The best value in the building is the cheapest thing in it. Oregano and mountain tea at one to three euros per 100g, unrestricted in every country we checked, weightless, and better than anything you can buy at home.
Ask where things come from. The seven-fold price gap between Evia and Volos mountain tea in a single shop is the whole lesson of this market. Provenance is the price.
Skip the pre-boxed gift sets. The entire point of Evripidou is loose product weighed out in front of you. A shrink-wrapped “Greek gift basket” is available at any airport for more money and less pleasure.
Where the locals go: Karatzas for cheese, Petros for pulses, Myloi Achaias for flour, Karpoi ton Angelon for nuts. Ask a regular where to buy cheese and they will say a shop name before you finish the sentence.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is Varvakios Agora open? Monday to Saturday, closed Sundays. Trading starts around 06:00 and stalls wind down through the early afternoon; the nominal envelope is roughly 07:00 to 18:00. Go before noon. It also closes on Greek public holidays.
Is the market free to enter? Yes. It is a working municipal food market, not an attraction, and there is no ticket.
What should I buy at Athens Central Market? Dried oregano, mountain tea, Chios mastiha, PDO saffron, thyme or pine honey, olive oil in a tin, pulses and olive oil soap. All are light, keep well and are legal to import almost everywhere.
Can I take Greek cheese and cured meat home? It depends entirely on where you live. UK travellers currently cannot bring back any dairy or most meat from the EU. Canada bars cured meat and restricts unpasteurised cheese. The US permits solid hard cheeses but bars most cured meats. Check your own government’s page before buying.
Can I haggle at Varvakios? Not really, and it is not the local technique. Compare across shops, taste before you buy, and build a rapport with one trader instead.
Is Varvakios Agora safe? During market hours, yes — it is busy and commercial. The streets west toward Omonia are ones to avoid after dark. Watch your bag in crowds.
Final Thoughts
The best souvenir from Athens is something you will finish. A jar of thyme honey, a bag of oregano that perfumes a cupboard for a year, mastiha you crumble into a cake next Christmas. Varvakios is where those things cost what Greeks pay for them rather than what a gift shop on Adrianou thinks a tourist will pay. Go early, taste a lot, ask where everything comes from, and check what your own country will let you carry through the door before you hand over your money.
Back to the main guide: for markets, boutiques, souvenirs and where to find them, return to our complete Athens shopping guide, or read on about the best souvenirs to buy in Athens and Greek olive oil, honey and food products worth taking home.