Greeks in London number somewhere above 40,000, and the community is older and stranger than most people assume. It did not arrive in one wave. It arrived in four, each for a different reason, and the traces of all four are still visible in different postcodes.
Four arrivals
The first was commercial. Greek merchant families from Chios and the Ionian islands set up trading houses in the City from the 1820s, and by the 1850s were wealthy enough to build the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Bayswater, which is still there and still magnificent.
The second was Cypriot, and much larger. From the 1930s and heavily through the 1950s and 60s, Greek Cypriots settled in Camden, Haringey and Islington. The third followed the 1974 division of Cyprus. The fourth is recent: young Greeks who left during the years after 2010, mostly graduates, and who cluster nowhere in particular because they are dispersed across professional London.
Where it is still visible
Green Lanes in Harringay is the obvious answer, and it is genuinely a Greek and Cypriot high street: bakeries, fish shops, coffee that is made properly. Camden Town holds the older community institutions. Bayswater has the cathedral and the Sunday crowd that comes with it.
What has largely gone is the trade concentration. The Cypriot tailoring workshops that once filled the streets behind Oxford Street have almost all closed, and the second generation went into other things entirely.
What returning visitors notice about Athens
People who left in 2011 and come back now describe the same three things. The centre is busier and cleaner than they remember, particularly around Syntagma and the pedestrianised Dionysiou Areopagitou. The coast has changed most: the old airport at Elliniko has become a park and a construction site, and the tram now runs down to Voula. And prices in the areas visitors use have risen faster than anywhere else in the city.
What has not changed is the clock. Dinner is still at ten, the bars still fill after midnight, and August still empties the place. A returning visitor who has spent 10 years adapting to London hours arrives and finds the city closed at seven in the evening and heaving at one in the morning, which is exactly what they left.
Practical, for a short return trip
- Direct flights run from all five London airports, 3 hours 45 in the air.
- The metro from the airport reaches Syntagma in 40 minutes and beats a taxi at rush hour.
- Orthodox Easter falls on a different date from the Western one in most years, and it is the single busiest travel week in Greece.
- The 15th of August is a public holiday and the country moves en masse on the days around it.
What this page is not
It is not an offer of anything in London. This agency works in Athens and Mykonos only. There is no London arrangement, no UK contact, and nothing available outside Greece under our name.
For the Athens end of a trip home, see the Athens page.
