The Port of Piraeus is the main port of Athens and the largest in Greece, set on the Saronic Gulf about 8 km southwest of central Athens. In 2025 it handled about 4.64 million TEU of containers and 19.1 million passengers, making it Europe’s busiest passenger port and the leading container port of the eastern Mediterranean. Athens first moved its fleet here from the shallow bay of Phaleron in 483 BC, and the harbour matters today because it is the first European port for ships coming through the Suez Canal, the position China’s state-owned COSCO Shipping has built on since it bought a controlling stake in 2016. The easiest way to understand it is to walk and ride it from east to west.
Arriving at Piraeus Station on the Kantharos Quays
Most visitors start where the trains stop. Line 1 of the Athens Metro ends at Piraeus station, right beside the harbour, and Line 3, the Athens Tram and the Suburban Railway all reach the port as well, so the walk from platform to ship is a few minutes. The water in front of the station is the main harbour, which the ancient Athenians called Kantharos. Piraeus itself was once a rocky island joined to the mainland only by a marshy strip that flooded most of the year; as that strip silted up, the island became a peninsula with three natural harbours, Kantharos and two smaller basins to the east.
The station also marks the start of the modern town. Piraeus was almost deserted under Ottoman rule, and permanent settlement only resumed in 1829. Once Athens became the capital of Greece in 1832, the port grew fast: the Athens–Piraeus railway opened in 1869, the Corinth Canal shortened the route to the west in 1893, and the Piraeus Port Authority was set up in 1930. Between 1920 and 1928 the population almost doubled, from 133,482 to 251,659, as refugees from Asia Minor arrived after the Greco-Turkish War. In the 2021 census the municipality had 168,151 people.
Ferry Gates for Crete, the Cyclades and the Dodecanese
Walk south along the quays and the harbour turns into a bus station for ships. The central port serves ferry routes to almost every island in the eastern half of Greece: Crete, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese and much of the northern and eastern Aegean. The passenger quays run for 2.8 km, with a draught of up to 11 m, and in 2017 they handled about 15.5 million passengers and 2.5 million vehicles. By 2025, counting all passenger traffic, Piraeus had reached about 19.1 million passengers, more than any other port in Europe; the next busiest, Messina in Italy, handled about 11.3 million in its latest reported year.
Those numbers swing with the seasons, since island ferries run far more often in summer, but they also explain the harbour’s shape. The central port is given over to ferries and cruise ships, while the western part of the port handles cargo. A walker sees that division plainly: holiday traffic close at hand, and cranes in the distance to the west.
The Piraeus Tower and the Cruise Berths
Above the ferry quays stands the Piraeus Tower, an 84 m office block begun in 1972 whose frame was finished in 1974. For decades only its three lowest floors were used and the rest stood empty. It was rebuilt from 2021 to 2023 and officially reopened on 4 June 2024, with 24 floors.
Further out along the harbour are the cruise berths. Cruise traffic reached 1,098,091 passengers in 2019, up 14.2% on 2018, and about a third of cruise sailings from Piraeus start or finish here rather than just calling. At the harbour entrance, parts of the ancient Eëtioneia mole survive. In the Middle Ages, a colossal marble lion stood at this entrance, giving the port its Venetian name, Porto Leone. The Venetian commander Francesco Morosini carried the Piraeus Lion off in 1687, and it still stands outside the Venetian Arsenal; a copy is on display in the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus.
Around the Headland to Zea Marina
Leave Kantharos and cross the neck of the peninsula eastward to reach Zea, known today as Pasalimani. In the 5th century BC this basin was a naval harbour. After 493 BC Themistocles fortified Piraeus, and after silver was found at Laurion in 483 BC Athens paid for 200 triremes and moved its fleet here from Phaleron. Those ships fought at Salamis in 480 BC. At its height the naval base had 372 shipsheds for triremes, and remains of these sheds can still be seen at Zea, as can the ruins of the Skeuotheke, the naval arsenal designed by the architect Philon, found in excavations at Pasalimani.
The streets behind the marina still follow a grid laid out by the architect Hippodamus of Miletus, and the city’s central square is named after him. The Archaeological Museum stands next to the ancient Theatre of Zea. Its best-known exhibits came from a lucky find: on 18 July 1959, workers laying pipes uncovered four bronze statues, including an Archaic Apollo from the 5th century BC and a larger-than-life Athena. Today Zea is a marina for yachts, its quays lined with the masts of private boats where the triremes once stood.
Mikrolimano Beneath the Hill of Kastella
The third harbour, and the smallest, lies further east under the steep hill of Kastella, the ancient Munichia. In 511 BC Hippias fortified the hill, and in 403 BC Thrasybulus defeated the Thirty Tyrants in the battle of Munichia on its slopes. The ancient harbour below it, also called Munichia, is now Mikrolimano, lined with seafood tavernas and small yachts.
From the top of Kastella, where neoclassical mansions surround the Veakeio Theatre, you can see the whole of the Attica basin and the Saronic Gulf. Just beyond Mikrolimano, the coastal district of Neo Faliro holds the Karaiskakis Stadium, home of Olympiacos, and the Peace and Friendship Stadium. This is the eastern end of the port city, and from here the tour turns back west, to the side of Piraeus that most ferry passengers never look at.
Westward to the Cargo and Car Terminals
Back past Kantharos, the waterfront changes from passengers to freight. The port’s conventional cargo terminal has 180,000 m² of storage and an annual capacity of about 25 million tonnes. Its two car terminals cover about 190,000 m², with space for 12,000 vehicles and a transshipment capacity of 670,000 units a year. In 2017 they handled 430,000 cars, of which 100,000 were for the Greek market and 330,000 were transshipped to other countries, a sign that Piraeus works as a hub for the wider region, not only as a gateway for Athens.
Beyond the old industrial suburbs of Drapetsona and Keratsini, where many refugees from Asia Minor settled in the 1920s, the shoreline curves toward the foot of Mount Aigaleo. This is where the tall container cranes stand, and where Piraeus changed most in the 21st century.
COSCO’s Piers at the Container Terminals
The container port has three terminals. Terminal 1, run by the Piraeus Port Authority itself, has a capacity of about 1.1 million TEU. Terminals 2 and 3 are run by Piraeus Container Terminal, a COSCO subsidiary; Terminal 2 can handle about 3 million TEU and the newer Terminal 3 about 2.7 million.
The chart above shows what happened here. In 2007 the port handled 1.37 million TEU; in 2009, as the financial crisis cut world trade, that fell to about 450,000. In October 2009 Greece leased Piers 2 and 3 to COSCO for 35 years. After the Greek debt crisis forced sales of state assets, COSCO bought 51% of the Piraeus Port Authority in 2016 for €280.5 million and took another 16% in October 2021 for €90 million, bringing its stake to 67%. The state still owns the land, and the authority’s concession runs to 2052. Container traffic peaked at 5.65 million TEU in 2019 and stood at about 4.64 million in 2025.
The change came with conflict. The dockworkers’ union, which represents about 350 workers, fought the sale with repeated strikes, and one dockworker called it a giveaway of property belonging to the Greek people. Union rules had required nine people to work a gantry crane; COSCO required four. For the authority, the results were clear on paper: in 2024 it reported revenue of €230.9 million and pre-tax profits of €112.9 million.
Perama and the Strait of Salamis
The tour ends at Perama, 8 km northwest of central Piraeus, the western limit of the port and of the Athens urban area. Its name comes from the Greek word for a passage, and it earns it: frequent ferries run across a narrow strait to Paloukia on Salamis Island, and in 2023 Paloukia and Perama each handled about 6.7 million passengers, more than any other Greek port except Piraeus itself. The water in front of Perama is the strait where the Greek fleet, much of it built at Piraeus, defeated the Persians in 480 BC.
From the container cranes of Perama to the ancient shipsheds at Zea, the whole port can be covered in a day by metro, bus and on foot. To see how the harbour fits into the city it serves, read our guide to the geography of Athens; for the sea its ferries cross, explore the Aegean Sea; and to understand why Asian cargo lines route through Piraeus at all, follow the shipping lane back to the Suez Canal.