Athens has a great Metro system, connecting all the dots of this great city. Fast, clean, cheap, and convenient, the Metro will take you anywhere your weary feet won’t go. Hop the Metro to visit a museum or take a day trip down to Piraeus. Jump on to get from your hotel to the Acropolis and back again. Buy a day pass (if you have a day to spare) and spend it going from one stop to another, visiting the Olympic facilities, the port, and outlying neighborhoods.
Like every public transit system, there are a few tricks to learn to help you navigate the city like a native. First trick: get a Metro map! There are maps everywhere: printed, posted on walls, displayed inside the trains themselves. You really can’t navigate the Athens Metro by hunch and feel. A Metro map is absolutely necessary to getting around the city … unless you don’t really care where you wind up.
Once you have map-in-hand, using the Metro is fairly simple:
- Determine where you are (the name of the station you’re in).
- Determine where you want to go (the name of your destination).
- Determine the subway line (or lines) that will get you to your destination. Do you need Line #1, #2, or #3? Is it a straight shot? Will you have to change lines?
- Determine the direction you need to go. Subway tracks run endlessly between two stations: the first and the last. These stations are used to tell you the direction trains are headed.
Say you are in Syntagma Station and want to go to the Larissa terminal. (Study the map to the right.) Notice that you need Line #2—the red line. In Syntagma, look for signs directing you to Line #2. But which direction do you want to travel? In this example, you want to go north, towards Agios Antonios (the final station on Line #2 in the direction you want to travel). So follow signs to Line #2—Agios Antonios. Clear?
There will be four stops before you arrive at Larissa. You can count them on the map and as the subway makes its required stops. Make sense?
Right in the center of Athens, there is an important triangle of stations that each serve two lines: Omonia (1 & 2), Monastiraki (1 & 3), and Syntagma (2 & 3). You have to go through one of these three stations if you need to change lines in order to reach your destination.
It sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. With a little practice and a bit of patience, you’ll be hopping on and off Metro trains like you were born in Athens.
Trains run daily from 5:30 until after midnight. There are manned and automatic ticket booths at every station.