Athens 'the world's most flirtatious city'

Athens, the home of famous Greek philosophers -- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, is the world's most flirtatious city, a new study has found.

In fact, the Greek capital emerged as the world's most flirtatious city in what's being claimed as the globe's largest-ever study of online flirting carried out by popular social-networking site Badoo.com. Moscow came in at number two on the list of nearly 200 cities around the world, while Rome took eighth place and Paris -- synonymous with romance -- managed only to rank 38th, according to the study.

The 'World Flirtation League' study ranked cities by the number of online flirtations initiated per month by Badoo users, The Daily Telegraph reported. The average Athenian initiated 25.7 online flirtations per month, more than twice as many as people in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil or Prague and far more than in Paris, London, Berlin or New York.

"Athens is a seductive city, with a hedonistic lifestyle," the British newspaper quoted Victoria Kyriakopoulous, author of 'The Lonely Planet Encounter Guide to Athens', as saying. Added British author Dr Simon Hardy: "It's probably fair to say that the Athenians perfected the art of flirtation in ancient times, especially at the time of symposia described by Plato."

The other cities to make it into the top 10 were Kuwait City, Baku in Azerbaijan, Tunis, Kiev, Beirut, Turin, and Bari in southern Italy.