Piraeus-Athens

About Piraeus-Athens

Piraeus is Athens' cruise port, 7 miles southwest of the Acropolis on the Saronic Gulf. Ships dock at one of 12 berths; shuttles or the metro (Line 1) reach central Athens in about 25 minutes. The Acropolis, the Acropolis Museum, the ancient Agora, and the Plaka neighborhood beneath the rock are the essentials. Cape Sounion's Temple of Poseidon is a popular half-day alternative when the in-town sites are saturated.

• Piraeus has been Athens's port since the early 5th century BC, when the Athenian statesman Themistocles developed it as a naval base; at its peak during the Golden Age of Athens, the harbour housed 372 trireme shipsheds.
• The famous Long Walls — fortified corridors connecting Athens to Piraeus — were built in the 5th century BC so that the city could be supplied by sea even under land siege, a strategy crucial to Athenian power.
• Piraeus is the fifth-largest passenger port in Europe and the 24th-largest in the world, serving approximately 4.37 million passengers annually, and is among the ten busiest container ports in Europe with 5.44 million TEUs.
• The port is majority-owned by the Chinese state company COSCO, which acquired a controlling stake in 2016 and has invested heavily to make Piraeus the busiest port in the Mediterranean — a geopolitically significant Belt and Road initiative project.
• Just 8 km from Athens city centre, Piraeus is seamlessly connected by metro (Line 1, the oldest in Greece, dating to 1869), making it one of the most accessible cruise ports in Europe for exploring a capital city.