US Embassy in Athens

The US State Department on Wednesday launched a new Travel Advisory Program which ranks Greece at the lowest advisory level for safety and security risk.

"Greece at the best level of the State Department's new Travel Advisory Program," US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt remarked on Twitter. "I'm looking forward to seeing even more American tourists here in Greece in the year ahead."

University students hold a blood-stained Greek flag from the deadly 1973 student uprising, in Athens on Friday. Several thousand people march to the US Embassy in Athens under tight police security to commemorate a 1973 student uprising that was crushed by Greece's military junta, that ruled the country from 1967-74. [Thanassis Stavrakis/AP]

The US Embassy in Athens will be closed for the Easter holidays, it said on Thursday.

The embassy will be closed from Friday, April 14, through Monday, April 17. It will open again on Tuesday, April 18. 

The Hellenic Initiative and the US Embassy in Athens are supporting Greek representatives at the international South by Southwest (SXSW) festival for a fourth year in a row.

The event opened on March 10 at Austin, Texas, and continues through Sunday.

A group of women hold a banner outside the US Embassy in Athens on Saturday, in support of the Women's March on Washington following the election of Donald Trump as US president. Similar protest rallies were held in more than 30 countries around the world in defense of press freedom and women's and human rights.

The US Embassy in Greece said on Thursday that the US Consulate in Thessaloniki will remain closed due to plumbing problems on Thursday.

Authorities say a police officer has been wounded in central Athens after shots were fired outside the offices of a political party.

Greek police early on Thursday arrested a militant who was in hiding with her child and whose Revolutionary Struggle group has carried out more than a dozen armed attacks, including one on the US embassy in Athens in 2007.

Greek police early on Thursday arrested a militant, who was in hiding with her child and whose Revolutionary Struggle group has carried out more than a dozen attacks, including one on the US embassy in Athens in 2007.

The US Embassy in Athens, its Consular Section in Thessaloniki and all US government offices in Greece will be closed Thursday in observance of Thanksgiving Day, a US national holiday.