Fires have been seen across the city and earlier today, protestors wearing hoods smashed window displays and threw paving stones at police as they marched through the capital.
Protestors chanted “Resist!” as they marched through central Athens, waving waving red and black flags in a tribute to 15-year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos who was shot dead by police in 2008.
The worst violence was seen in the Exarchia district with protestors throwing petrol bombs at police. The bohemian Exarchia area is where the unarmed Grigoropoulos was shot dead nine years ago.
More than 2,000 police were deployed across Athens as authorities tried to contain the violence ahead of a visit from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan tomorrow.
Officers formed cordons outside parliament and central Athens hotels as protestors marched past.
Protestors chanted: “This bullet did not fall by accident, keep your hands off the youth” and held banners reading “These days belong to Alexis”.
Clashes also broke out in other cities across Greece,
On the night of December 6, 2008, hours after Grigoropoulos was shot dead, thousands took to the streets of Athens, torching cars and smashing shop windows.
The riots, that were also fuelled by anger over unemployment and economic hardship in the prelude to Greece’s debt crisis, lasted for weeks.
Athens is no stranger to violent riots – just last month thousands of Greeks marched through the streets of the capital to mark the 44th anniversary of the student uprising against the ruling military junta, which ended in bloodshed.
More than 5,000 police officers were deployed in central Athens to marshall more than 10,000 people as they marched to the US embassy, which some protesters accuse of having supported the seven-year military dictatorship.
After the march, a few protestors set bins alight and threw stones at police near the Athens Polytechnic University.