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ATHENS: Surrounded by a hubbub of blaring music, restaurant terraces and rumbling suitcase wheels slaloming between overflowing litter bins, Giorgos Zafeiriou believes surging tourism has made his historic Athens neighborhood unrecognizable.
The Greek capital’s Plaka district “is threatened by overtourism,” said Zafeiriou, who has lived there for more than three decades and leads its residents’ association.
This year, 10 million people are expected to visit Athens, an increase of two million from 2024 which reflects the city’s growing popularity as a tourist destination since the Covid-19 pandemic ended.
Despite its label as the cradle of Western civilization, Athens was previously regarded as a mere stopping point between the airport and the port of Piraeus, from where tourists explore Greece’s myriad of picturesque islands.
Nicknamed “the neighborhood of the gods,” Plaka is nestled below the ancient Acropolis hill, a world heritage site hosting the millennia-old Parthenon temple which welcomed almost 4.5 million visitors last year.
Plaka is now awash with tourists who navigate its warren of narrow streets lined with cafes, taverns, souvenir shops, small Byzantine churches and relics from Antiquity and the Ottoman era.
Plaka “is Europe’s oldest neighborhood which has been inhabited continuously since Antiquity,” said Lydia Carras, head of the Ellet association working to preserve the environment and cultural heritage.
“We cannot see it lose its soul,” she added.
Tourism is a pillar of the Greek economy, which endured years of painful austerity following the 2008 global financial crash and the ensuing eurozone debt crisis.
For souvenir shop seller Konstantinos Marinakis, “Greece is finally doing better thanks to the good health of tourism which allowed the economy to recover and create jobs.”
But the flourishing sector has generated a backlash in Europe’s most sought-after locations, with locals complaining of soaring housing prices and the impact on their neighborhoods.
Protesters have targeted tourists with water pistols in Spain’s Barcelona, while the Italian city of Venice has introduced a charge in a bid to control visitor numbers.
Mayor Haris Doukas told AFP with pride that Athens was now one of the world’s 10 most-visited cities, but acknowledged “areas like Plaka which are saturated with tourists.”
“We are not yet at the stage of Barcelona, but we must act before it is too late,” he said.
An “intervention unit” for Plaka was recently created to enforce rules with the support of the police.
Any resident who spots a restaurant terrace encroaching on public space or cars parked on the pavement can report the offenders to this team.
“Between 1960 and 1980, Plaka was overwhelmed by discos and bouzoukias,” and “many residents had already left,” explained Carras, referring to clubs that play traditional Greek music.
A 1993 presidential decree shut the clubs, protected homes and specified the use of each building in the neighborhood, with hotels only allowed on certain streets.
But “these rules have been dodged,” with “entire houses converted into several apartments” advertised on short-term rental platforms, said Dimitris Melissas, a lawyer specializing in urban planning.
Plaka’s population of 2,000 can be swamped by up to four times as many tourists in the summer, added Melissas, although no official statistics exist because the census measures Athens as a whole.
Representing Ellet, the lawyer has taken a case over the legality of 16 buildings converted entirely into seasonal rentals to the Council of State, Greece’s top administrative court.
He argued they are actually hotel premises in disguise because they have receptions or serve breakfast on terraces. A decision, which could set an important legal precedent, is expected by the end of September.
The conservative government has banned new registrations of apartments on short-term rental platforms for at least a year in central Athens, where more than 12,000 seasonal lets existed in 2024, fueling rent rises.
“But when I still read adverts in newspapers to invest in apartments that can be converted into Airbnbs, I doubt the effectiveness of this measure,” said Melissas.
“The problem in Greece is not voting laws but enforcing them.”

RAUCESTI: When epidemiologist Daniela Gafita makes her rounds in the remote villages of northeastern Romania to educate communities about the risks of measles, she frequently encounters parents who hesitate to have their children vaccinated.
With measles cases in Europe hitting a 25-year high last year, Romania was the country most affected: it recorded 13,000 of the approximately 18,000 cases registered between June 2024 and May 2025 in the European Economic Area, which includes EU members as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
But the disease has also re-emerged globally, with the United States confronting its worst epidemic in 30 years, in part fueled by anti-vaccine misinformation that has been circulating on social media since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite widespread vaccine skepticism in Romania, Gafita and her colleagues from the local health department are undeterred in their mission to spread the immunization message.
“We are trying to recover little by little what we lost” in the past decades when the situation was still at bay, said the 52-year-old.
Romania has the EU’s lowest vaccination rate at 62 percent, a far cry from the 95 percent the World Health Organization (WHO) says is needed for effective control.


But it’s a fight on many fronts, due not only to poverty but also poor access to health care and persistent rumors that vaccination causes autism.
“I heard the vaccine is dangerous,” said a woman, who declined to give her name, in the village of Raucesti.
Elena Armenia, who also lives in the village of 7,500 people, told AFP that she did not want her youngest child to be vaccinated after reading “about a link to autism” online, a misconception that has been refuted by the scientific community.
“Fear crept into my mind and I can’t shake it off,” said the 34-year-old.
Her neighbors’ children recently ended up in hospital after contracting measles, a contagious disease that causes fever, respiratory symptoms and a rash — but can also lead to pneumonia, brain inflammation and even death.
Romania reported eight fatalities from measles between June 2024 to May 2025. In July, a child died in Britain, with three deaths being recorded in the United States this year.
Family doctor Monica Apostol told AFP that she was less optimistic than some of her colleagues about Romania’s vaccination rate being boosted soon.
“I’m hitting a brick wall,” she said about her many conversations with parents.


Several factors have contributed to lower vaccination rates and subsequently to the resurgence of measles in Romania, where jabs are offered for free but are not mandatory.
Millions of Romanians, including many health professionals, left the country after the end of communism in 1989. Moreover, the country has seen periods of vaccine shortages, but also an underfunded health care system and an increasing lack of trust in authorities.
During the Covid pandemic, public figures in Romania but also worldwide began launching or endorsing anti-vaccination campaigns, with US President Donald Trump appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr as health secretary despite his support of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Romania’s far right also seized on anger over strict pandemic measures and started promoting anti-vaccine beliefs.
Far-right leader George Simion, who topped the first round of the presidential election in May before losing in the second round, has said that parents should have the freedom to decide whether to have their children vaccinated or not.
Pro-European President Nicusor Dan recently called on authorities to redouble their efforts to “regain people’s trust,” and combat a deluge of conspiracy theories and fake news that has eroded confidence.
“The recent elections have shown that misinformation campaigns are conducted in a highly professional manner,” said Gindrovel Dumitra, coordinator for vaccinations at one of Romania’s main doctors’ associations.
Faced with a situation that is “out of control,” his colleague Gafita advocates for tougher nationwide rules, including the need for children to be vaccinated to be able to attend school.
“Even if such measures are unpopular and contrary to what many people want,” she said.