The school began in 1936 under a different name and a slightly mysterious founder - Charles Beregean, known in Greek as Karolos Berzan, described as a mathematician, though no record of a degree or published work survives to confirm it. He called his creation the Standard Lyceum of Athens. In 1952 it moved to its present home in Psychiko, and by 1976 it had adopted the Moraitis name. When Antonis Moraitis died in 1981, the school passed to his daughters, and it remains a family institution to this day, run by Chrysanthi Moraiti-Kartali alongside the Kartalis and Kasimatis families. Few private schools in Greece can claim such continuity across the upheavals of the twentieth century.

The school's academic record is striking. In the brutal Pan-Hellenic university entrance exams, about half of Moraitis students score above 17 out of 20. Those who take the International Baccalaureate instead have averaged 36 out of 45 against a global average of 29 - and in one strong year, two students hit a perfect 45. The language results are just as lopsided in the school's favor: three-quarters earn the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English against a national average of half that. In 2013 it ranked first in Greece in mathematics, a subject the school takes so seriously that it sorts students into ability-based groups from the gymnasium years onward. Quietly, in 1994, it became the first school in Greece to adopt an anti-bullying policy.

A school is more than its exam scores, and Moraitis fills the gaps with an almost dizzying range of clubs - from theatre and film to science fiction, yoga, and entrepreneurship - and a students' yearbook called Efivos. Its debate team has earned distinctions at international tournaments; in one year three of the eight Greek students chosen for the European Youth Parliament came from these halls. There is even a Formula One in Schools team, Aeolus Racing, which placed seventh at the 2016 world finals in Austin, Texas. The social heart of the year is the Panigiri, a charity fair organized by the high schoolers each spring on the weekend before Easter, when the campus fills with food, games, and noise in the name of a good cause.

The roll of former students stretches across Greek public life. In the arts, it produced Yorgos Lanthimos, the singular filmmaker behind The Lobster and Poor Things, alongside actors and writers like Christoforos Papakaliatis and Haris Romas. In business, graduates rose to chair the National Bank of Greece and lead the energy giant Metlen. Antigoni Roubessi competed as an Olympian. And in politics, the school's most internationally recognizable alumnus is Yanis Varoufakis - economist, professor, and the leather-jacketed finance minister who faced off against Europe's creditors at the height of the Greek debt crisis. From a quiet suburb north of Athens, the Moraitis School has sent its students out to shape the country and, now and then, to argue with the world.