page_title: Athens
section_title: Athens Urban Area
hierarchical_section_title: Athens / Administration / Athens Urban Area
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Vue d'Athènes en direction du nord-ouest, sur les quartiers d'Exarcheia et Neapoli (au pied du Mont Lycabette), la colline Strefi (au centre) et le Champ de Mars (Pedion Areos)
context_page_description: Athens, is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence started somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennium BC.
  Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. A center for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent, and in particular the Romans. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Greece.
  Athens is a global city and one of the biggest economic centers in southeastern Europe. It has a large financial sector, and its port Piraeus is both the largest passenger port in Europe, and the second largest in the world.
  The Municipality of Athens, which actually constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire city, had a population of 664,046 within its official limits, and a land area of 38.96 km².
context_section_description: The Athens Urban Area (Greek: Πολεοδομικό Συγκρότημα Αθηνών), also known as Urban Area of the Capital (Greek: Πολεοδομικό Συγκρότημα Πρωτεύουσας), today consists of 40 municipalities, 35 of which make up what is referred to as the Greater Athens municipalities, located within 4 regional units (North Athens, West Athens, Central Athens, South Athens); and a further 5, which make up the Greater Piraeus municipalities, located within the regional unit of Piraeus as mentioned above. The densely built up urban area of the Greek capital sprawls across 412 km² (159 sq mi) throughout the Attica Basin and has a total population of 3,074,160 (in 2011).
  The Athens Municipality forms the core and center of Greater Athens, which in its turn consists of the Athens Municipality and 34 more municipalities, divided in four regional units (Central, North, South and West Athens), accounting for 2,641,511 people (in 2011) within an area of 361 km² (139 sq mi). Until 2010, these four regional units made up the abolished Athens Prefecture. The municipality of Piraeus, the historic Athenian port, with its 4 suburban municipalities make up the regional unit of Piraeus, which in turn forms Greater Piraeus.
  Greater Athens and Greater Piraeus with part of East and West Attica regional units combined make up the continuous Athens Urban Area, also called the "Urban Area of the Capital" or simply "Athens" (the most common use of the term), spanning over 412 km² (159 sq mi), with a population of 3,090,508 people as of 2011. The Athens Urban Area is considered to form the city of Athens as a whole, despite its administrative divisions, which is the largest in Greece and one of the most populated urban areas in Europe.
caption: View of Neapoli, Athens
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