Tour guide or not in Athens

You don’t need a guide if visiting the Acropolis, Acropolis Museum, Ancient Agora and the National Archaeological Museum. I do suggest buying Rick Steves latest guidebook (4th edition) that will prepare you for visits to these places: https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/athens-guidebook. The 5th edition will be available in June.

As is the case everywhere in the world when visiting a historical site, a private guide can be informative if you need more details than what's available in a printed guidebook or on-site with an impersonal audio tour.

If you already have some knowledge of what you're visiting, a guide can answer specific questions and provide personalized answers while sharing interesting anecdotes. It also adds a human touch.

An 8-point answer to your "Tour guide or not" question can be found here:

https://www.tourist-guides.gr/about-us/what-is-a-tourist-guide/

On this same website, you'll find a list of official guides and their contact information.

https://www.tourist-guides.gr/guides/list-of-licensed-tourist-guides/?bla=1338&q=attica

Obviously, if you already have some good knowledge of archaeology, architecture, mythology, ancient art, and Greek history in general, the guide's level of knowledge and specialization on specific subjects can be important; you should discuss your needs with him/her

Personally, I do a lot of research and read extensively in advance about the places I'm going (sometimes too much). If a specific place interests me and I want to learn more I hire a guide. Sometimes it's been a good idea, sometimes not.

With or without a guide, it's up to you. It's impossible to know what would suit you best.

JoLui, have you personally used one of the guides for Athens?

You can download free audio tours on Rick Steves app. https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/audio-tours/greece-turkey There is one for the Acropolis. Listen to it before you go and see if it satisfies you. Having an actual guide will most always give you more information than you knew you needed, because they are licensed professionals.

Denise, yes, a long time ago (when we paid in Drachma before the availability of audio guides and all the current online resources) at the National Archaeological Museum. More recently in other parts of Greece for specific historical topics.

How about the vague answer of "it depends?" Signing up for any sort of guide or tour commits you for a certain time period, which not everyone wants to do. We like flexibility on our trips, but for certain places and things, have hired private guides or taken small group walking tours.

When we first visited Athens, last fall, we took advantage of Rick Steves' excellent walking tours (not always in the order given). Because I am very interested in ancient Greece, however, I used ToursbyLocals to find an experienced guide to lead us on a half-day tour of the Acropolis and the New Acropolis Museum. We found it very helpful, and in fact, invaluable to me to enjoy the experience. You would probably take the Rick Steves tour of the Acropolis, however - it kind of depends on your level of interest. In our case, we had five nights in Athens, and we spent one entire day on a guided trip, with the same guide, to Delphi.

If you don't want the expense of a private guide, I really recommend the Rick Steves audio tours for Athens- when we went in 2021 we used these for a historic walk around Athens, the Acropolis, the Agora, and I think he may have had one for the archeological museum as well. That was actually our first experience with anything Rick Steves related- a friend recommended the audio guides to me. You can download them for free on the Rick Steves app or via the podcast app.