Alecos Levidis. Painting 1961-2026. A lifelong game

The visit starts in 1961, with drawings Alecos Levidis made at 17. Many are political, made in years of dictatorship and war, and he kept them in a drawer for decades: they have been shown only once before, in 2006. The wall texts are in his first person, so the painter talks you round his retrospective.

It runs to more than 500 works. You walk through a double gateway, part of a house mural the Benaki's conservators removed and rebuilt here, into the landscapes and still lifes of the 1980s and 90s. Further on are portraits, painted book covers, artist's notebooks in vitrines, and a ground-floor room of stage sets centred on his 1992 Antigone. If your shelves hold Kedros or Estia paperbacks, look at the covers before you go.

The catch is size: six decades, laid out by the artist himself. Tickets are €9 (€7 reduced), online or at the door. Pireos 138 is closed Monday to Wednesday and stays open until 22:00 on Fridays and Saturdays.