Before Piraeus existed as the power it became, Phaleron was how Athens met the sea. Strabo listed it first among the coastal demes east of Piraeus, and Pausanias placed it precisely: equidistant from Athens and Cape Kolias, twenty stadia from each. Ships landed here; armies embarked. The ancient harbour lay west of the headland around what is now the church of St. George — a 17th-century chapel likely standing on even older foundations. Conglomerate blocks excavated from the heights of Old Phaleron are believed to be remnants of the Phaleric Wall recorded by Thucydides, a long-gone defensive line joining the deme to the city. Pausanias also notes that Phaleron contained an altar to the unknown god, positioned near the Temple of Zeus — a detail early Christian writers would later seize upon. When the Ottoman Empire held Athens, the port was called Porto Vecchio, the 'old port'. An English consul named Jean Giraud, visiting in 1674, called the headland 'Three Towers' or Tripyrgi, after ruins that had become local landmarks. The name lasted into the 19th century.

The coast has witnessed its share of failed campaigns. In May 1827, during the Greek War of Independence, a Greek force landed at the Three Towers area with the aim of relieving the besieged garrison on the Acropolis. The expedition ended in disaster; the Acropolis fell the following month. Yet independence did come, and with it the gradual return of settlement. By the late 19th century 'old Phaleron' was acquiring its distinguishing prefix — 'old' — to set it apart from Neo Phaleron, a newer suburb that grew up to the west in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1883 Athens connected to it by horse-drawn tram, in 1890 by steam tram, and later by electrified rail. The 20th century brought rapid growth, then tragedy: in August 1926 a seaplane airport opened at the western Delta area, with the first international route running Brindisi–Faliro–Istanbul. Growth, then war, then recovery. Many Greeks from Istanbul arrived after 1974, particularly following the Cyprus crisis, and formed what the article describes as 'a very active and prominent community.'

The most arresting landmarks in Palaio Faliro today are not buildings but ships. The Naval Tradition Park along the seafront holds the armoured cruiser Georgios Averof — the warship that served as flagship of the Hellenic Navy during the Balkan Wars — moored here as a museum. Alongside it sits a full-scale replica of the ancient Athenian trireme Olympias, built in the 1980s to test classical rowing techniques and seaworthiness. To walk the deck of the Averof, riveted steel climbing above you, and then look across at the oar-banks of the Olympias is to stand at two extreme points of Greek naval history within a few metres of each other. The Phaleron Allied War Cemetery, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is nearby: a sobering counterpoint, its headstones marking Allied soldiers and airmen who died during the Second World War campaigns in Greece.

The 2004 Athens Olympics gave Palaio Faliro its most recent transformation. The Faliro Coastal Zone Olympic Complex hosted beach volleyball and other events; the Faliro Sports Pavilion Arena opened to competition; and the coastal infrastructure — promenades, marina, tram line — was overhauled. The Athens Tram Line 3, inaugurated during this period, now runs through the southern coastal suburbs, threading together the beach-front communities from Syntagma Square down to the shore. The Marina of Flisvos, next to the Flisvos Public Park, has become a social hub: people jog the waterfront at dawn, families fill the park benches at dusk, and the Athenian Planetarium — the Evgenidio Foundation, housed in a domed building near the coast — draws visitors on clear nights. A new waterfront parkland called Aenaon is under development at the Faliro Delta, expected to complete around 2028.

Palaio Faliro's residential fabric is woven from nine distinct neighbourhoods: Amfithea, Batis, Edem, Panagitsa, Floisvos, Palmyra, Pikrodafni, Agia Varvara, and Kopsachila. The oldest surviving church in the municipality is the chapel of St. George in Xirotagaro, built probably in the 17th century near the Museum of Naval Tradition and restored in 1985. The Church of St. Alexander, the area's metropolis, was founded in 1916 on the initiative of the Urban League of Palaio Faliro in honour of St. Alexander, Archbishop of Constantinople; the foundation stone was laid by the then-Prince Alexander of the Hellenes, later king. The Church of the Assumption of Mary, modelled on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, was first built in 1930, burned down in 1969, and rebuilt. Each church is a stratigraphy of disaster and renewal — the same cycle that has characterised this coast since antiquity. Among Palaio Faliro's notable residents past and present: the statesman and philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum, who ruled Athens as governor under Macedonian authority in the late 4th century BC, and economist Yanis Varoufakis.