Traditional Greek music - rebétika and dhimotik?- can, at its best, provide the city's most compelling nighttime entertainment. To partake, however, you really need to visit during the winter months; from around May to October most clubs and boîtes close their doors, while the musicians head off to tour the countryside and islands. Most of the places that remain open are a tourist travesty of over-amplified and overpriced bouzoúki noise - at their nadir, not surprisingly, in Pláka.

As for other forms of live music, there are small, indigenous jazz and rock scenes, perennially strapped for funds and venues, but worth checking out. Classical music performances tend to form the core of the summer Hellenic Festival, but with the completion in 1991 of the city's concert hall out on Vasilíssis Sofías there is now a long-running winter season as well. Discos and music bars are very much in the European mould. The clubs in the city tend to close during the summer, unless they have roof terraces; Athenian youth, meanwhile, move out to a series of huge hangar-like disco-palaces in the coastal suburbs.

For information and knowledgeable advice on all kinds of Athenian music - traditional, rock and jazz - look in at the record shops 7+7, Iféstou 7, Monastiráki, or Happening, Hariláou Trikoúpi 13. Both of these generally display posters for the more interesting events and have tickets on sale for rock, jazz or festival concerts.