[1][2] The university is situated in the neighborhood of Votanikos, on a 25-hectare green campus that straddles both sides of the historic Iera Odos (the Sacred Way of antiquity), close to the Acropolis, at the heart of the ancient Olive Grove.

[2][11] An external evaluation of all academic departments in Greek universities was conducted by the Hellenic Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (HQA).

To its east lies the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos and to the west was the location of Plato's olive, whose remains are exhibited inside the main building of the University.

Its buildings comprise a great number of auditoriums and laboratories, a library, computer rooms, agricultural facilities (arboretum, vineyard, experimental fields, flower garden, greenhouses, cowshed, sheep pen, chicken coop, dairy installations, and aquaculture tanks), museums, student center, indoor gym, and sports fields.

The largest part of the site where the university is located was appropriated by Hadji Ali Haseki, an 18th-century Ottoman ruler of Athens and used as his personal farm.

As its Greek name shows (Ανωτάτη Γεωπονική Σχολή Αθηνών) the college was originally modeled after the French Grandes Ecoles.

The great famine of World War II gave a sense of urgency to the university's founding mission: to help Greece obtain self-sufficiency in food.

The 1967–1974 dictatorship brought turmoil to the College, culminating in the suicide of lab technician Theophilos Frangopoulos in 1969, by cyanide poisoning.