Plaka sits in the lap of the Acropolis on the north slope. The lower streets are nineteenth-century neoclassical; the upper, where Plaka meets Anafiotika, are Cycladic — small whitewashed houses built by stonemasons from Anafi in the 1860s, on the cheap, on the rock. The whitewash matters. A high-albedo wall reflects almost all incoming sunlight; the air alongside it stays cool, and the shadow opposite gets a second bounce of soft, diffuse light that reads almost as cool as direct shade. Walking the narrow lanes of Anafiotika at 7:30 in the morning in August is one of the genuinely strange thermal experiences a city can offer.
The picks below are graded for the window from sunrise to about 10 AM, when the sun climbs over the rock and the walls’ trick stops working. After that, Plaka is hot, the Acropolis is closed-shoulder hot, and the move is to go downhill to the Plaka tavernas under the awnings. The route up is the route to take. A practical note: most of these picks involve stairs. Some are smooth marble; some are rough stone with iron handrails. Stay Cool flags the rough ones.