Self-Guided Tours in Greece

Self-guided walking in Greece takes the same shape everywhere it turns up, an app-led hunt through a historic core, but the six towns it covers barely resemble each other on the ground. Corfu's route loops the old fortress town's kantounia alleys past the Bell Tower of the Annunziata Church; Rhodes plays out inside crusader walls along the Street of the Knights; Athens works in the shadow of the Acropolis, through Monastiraki and Pláka to the Ermou Street shops. Thessaloniki adds the harbour and the Arch of Galerius to its clues, Kos stays inside its Old Town near the Plane Tree of Hippocrates, and Chania in Crete threads Venetian and Ottoman façades stacked along the old harbour.

Every route works through the same World City Trail app — buy a ticket, enter the ten-digit number, and GPS takes over the navigation from stop to stop while a synthesised voice-over reads each clue aloud for anyone who'd rather listen than read. Each walk takes roughly two to three hours end to end, pausing wherever the town suggests — a coffee under the Acropolis in Athens, a photo by Thessaloniki's Umbrellas sculpture, a swim break in Kos, a plate of Cretan food in Chania's Old Town — and picking things back up whenever suits, even the next day. None of the six towns runs more than this one game, so the choice comes down to which town you're standing in rather than which walk to book.

Practical. Greek summers run hot across all six towns, typically 30-34C in July and August with little shade on stone streets, so a walk is far more comfortable started before ten in the morning or after five in the afternoon. Spring and autumn bring 20-25C and thinner crowds, and the walks run year-round since nothing about them depends on ferries or sea conditions. Bring a phone with charge and data, since the clues live in the app rather than on a printed sheet, and a portable charger earns its keep on the longer three-hour routes in Athens or Thessaloniki.