According to archaeological researches, the first organisational efforts and construction of small walls began during the Neolithic period (4000 b.c ) . 
The myth says that the name of the city is derived from the adversity of Neptune and Athena as regards to the protection of Athens. Neptune, to gain the sympathy of the city residents, offered them a horse, while Athena, striking the rock of Acropolis with her spear, offered them the olive that sprouted there as gift. The Athenians preferred the olive, as it symbolized to them peace and prosperity and so the city took the name of the winning goddess.
At 508 b.c. the first tragic dances of Thespidos appeared, which took their name from the ancient dramatic Thespis, considered the author of dramatic art, after he introduced the "hypocrite". From the innovation of Thespis  resulted the tragedy and then the theatre was born.
Athens reached its peak in the 5th century b.c., under the leadership of Pericles (the Golden Century of Pericles, when science, literature and arts boomed). During that era the city became the birthplace of democracy and the spring of free, human-centred thinking, which formed the basis of Western civilisation. Athens experienced a unique intellectual and artistic blossoming, representative samples of which are the monuments of Acropolis and the development of tragedy, with the most important representatives being Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, comedy with Aristofanes and historiography with Herodotus and Thucydides. The education of Athenians during this period was focused on philosophy with the contemporary sophists and Socrates.
At the same time Athens prospered as a naval-mercantile power of the ancient world and became the leader of the Greek alliance that defeated the armies of the invading Persian Empire twice. Nevertheless, after decades of bitter fighting with its rival Greek city of Sparta, Athens was defeated and lost everything but its timeless edifices and its illustrious cultural reputation.
Athens was conquered and destroyed time and time again. In the 2nd b.c. it falls to the Romans, becomes part of their Empire and subsequently part of the Byzantine Empire.
In 396 Athens was invaded by the Goths. The Athenians agreed to protect their city from pillage under a certain amount of money. After the invaders had left, the city kept on being the cradle of classic culture, though it never regained its previous glory.
In 1204 the Crusaders led by Bonifacius Moferaticus entered the fortress of Acropolis. The Crusaders plundered religious relics and votive offerings, many of which were melt and then turned into coins.
After suffering greatly at the hands of Catalans, Florentines and Venetians during the Middle Ages, the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1456. In the battle for the control of Athens, in 1688, the Venetians bombarded the Turks who were fortified on the Acropolis and reduced its ancient temples to the ruins that we see today.
The 19th century held for Athens dramatic events. In 1800, as ambassador of England, the Lord Elgin (1766-1841) was installed in Istamboul (Lord Elgin and Kinkardine). Invoking the destructions of ancient monuments and offering the excuse of their protection, he violently removed departments of the decoration of the temples of the Acropolis rock, among those pediments of Parthenon and one of the Caryatids. The slavery of Elgin continued the same period that archaelogists and thieves of ancient objects visited Greece.
In 1821 the Greek nation rose against the Ottoman Empire and soon afterwards Athens was liberated. In 1833 the city was designated as the capital of modern Greece and developed into the cosmopolitan centre that it is today.
During the reign of King Othon (1832-1862) a modern city plan was laid out and public buildings erected. The finest legacy of this period is the buildings of the University of Athens, the Greek National Library and the Greek National Academy on Panepistimiou Street. In 1896 first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, with the occasion of which in the capital was realised appreciable work, with Mainer the reconstruction of ancient Panathinaikos of stage. The inspiration for restarting the more important athletic fights of antiquity was French Baron Pierre Coubertain.
Athens experienced its first period of explosive growth. Its population grew rapidly when Greek refugees arrived from Turkey at 1922.
The city's inhabitants suffered extreme hardships during the German occupation in World War II, but the city escaped damage. The German Possession lasted between the 1941-1944 intervals. The resistance to the conquerors was already organised by the first days, with the most characteristic the burning of the German Nazis flag that was posted in Acropolis, in May 1941. After the victory of allied troops, the Germans abandoned Athens without battle, on 14 October 1944, and on the 18th of the same month the Greek flag was situated again in Acropolis. The liberation of Greece in 1944 didn't bring peace but civil war, which ended in 1949. A period of political unrest led to a coup d'etat in 1967, and the severe opression of the Greek people. Democracy was finally restored in 1974. Greece became a full member of the European Community in 1981.
In September of 1997 The International Committee of Olympic Games announced the result of the voting for entrusting the Olympic Games of 2004 to the city of Athens and vindicating her long-lasting effort to entertain her Games. Despite the scepticism of many observers, the games were a great success and brought renewed international prestige to Athens.