In ancient Greece, hospitality was not good manners. It was sacred. Zeus himself watched over the guest, and whoever knocked at your door was welcomed, fed and looked after before anyone asked who they were. Three thousand years later, that is still how we treat people here. And it is exactly what Endon is: you are not a customer booking a service. You are my guest, in my city.

I grew up in a working-class neighbourhood of Athens, far from the postcards. That is where I learned what this city really is. Athens doesn't perform for you. It gives you ancient marble and open sea in the same afternoon, and at night it comes alive, with streets full of people long after midnight. Its best places are not the ones with a queue outside. They are the ones Athenians keep for themselves.

I live abroad now, and I have learned something I didn't know when I lived here: I miss it. Not the monuments. The noise, the light, the people, the feeling that the evening could go anywhere.

Most visitors give Athens one day. They see the Acropolis, walk through the old town and fly to an island, sure they have seen it. They haven't. Athens doesn't open up to you in a day, and it never opens up from a list. That's why I started Endon: to hand you my city the way I would hand it to a friend who came to visit.