Athens Tram: timetable, lines & map

The Athens Tram runs 7 days a week according to the following schedule:

• Sunday–Thursday: 5:30 AM – 1:00 AM
• Friday & Saturday: 5:30 AM – 1:30 AM

(Note: Exact times for the first and last departures vary slightly depending on the specific terminal, Syntagma, Pikrodafni, Agia Triada, or Asklepieio Voulas, but the network is active within these hours).

End-to-end journey times by line:

Worth knowing: there is roadwork on Vasilisis Olgas Avenue running through 15 June, and while that work is on, T6 is terminating at FIX. Stops at Leoforos Vouliagmenis, Zappio and Syntagma are all out. Routing could shift again before this article gets to you, so the safe move is to glance at the current map a day or two before your trip.

A single Ath.ena Ticket goes for €1.40. The moment you validate it, you have ninety minutes to ride tram, metro, bus, trolleybus and the urban section of the suburban railway with no cap on the number of transfers. The airport line stays outside that deal; the airport runs need a separate ticket.

The reduced fare is €0.60 and applies to students, anyone 65 or over, and 7-to-18-year-olds with ID on them. Kids under six ride for nothing.

Longer-stay options:

You can buy from a vending machine or a staffed booth, and both turn up at every metro and tram station. The machines accept coins, banknotes and bank cards, but in practice they'll spit a fair number of foreign cards back out, so I'd carry a few euros in change as backup. The alternative is watching the tram leave while you're still wrestling with the touchscreen.

The other option is Tap2Ride. Tap a contactless Visa or Mastercard on the orange validator inside the carriage (Apple Pay and Google Pay handle the same way). Stick with one card for the whole trip. The system doesn't print a paper receipt. Tap2Ride only ever charges the adult fare, which means a discounted ticket has to go through the personalised Ath.ena Card. STASY brought that card in during the 2017 ticketing overhaul, and topping it up is easy: any metro or tram station has a machine. If you take multiple trips on the same day, the system combines the fares and automatically applies the 24-hour pass rate (€4.10), ensuring that you never pay more than necessary.

A detail that bites newcomers. Paper Ath.ena Tickets are not valid until you touch them against the small reader inside the carriage, and you need to do that before the doors close. Inspectors do hop on without warning. The fine for riding without a validated ticket is many multiples of the original fare.

T6 and T7 are the two routes currently running. STASY swapped out the old Lines 3, 4, and 5 on 6 December 2021 in favour of this two-line setup. Sixty low-floor vehicles handle the work: twenty-five Alstom Citadis 305 sets and thirty-five AnsaldoBreda Sirio sets, on standard-gauge track electrified at 750 volts DC.

Line T6 from Syntagma to Pikrodafni

18.2 kilometres separate Syntagma Square from Pikrodafni, and T6 covers all of them. From the centre, the line calls at Zappio, Leoforos Vouliagmenis, the FIX / Syngrou-Fix metro interchange, and Neos Kosmos before bending toward the coast. With normal service running, end to end is around thirty-three minutes.

Line T7 from Agia Triada to Asklepieio Voulas

T7 is the coast line. 16.1 kilometres of track from Piraeus to Voula. Starting from Agia Triada it heads east to Neo Faliro and S.E.F. (Peace and Friendship Stadium), then traces the seafront through Trocadero, Parko Flisvou, Edem, Marina Alimou, Kalamaki, the Agios Kosmas stops and Glyfada. Last stop: Asklepieio Voulas. Door to door, roughly fifty minutes.

Major stops and what is nearby

What the tram does not reach

Two notable absences from the network: the Acropolis area and Athens International Airport. To get to the Acropolis, switch to Metro Line 2 at Syntagma or Syngrou-Fix; the right stop is Akropoli. For the airport, you'll need Metro Line 3 or the X95 express bus.

Map courtesy of erasmus.gr.

It comes down to three steps: buy an Ath.ena Ticket from the platform vending machine, board through whichever door is closest, and touch the ticket to the small reader inside the carriage before the doors shut behind you. If you're paying with Tap2Ride you skip the first step and tap on board directly. The ninety minutes start counting from your first validation, and the same clock keeps running as you swap to the next metro train or bus.

A recorded voice calls every stop, first in Greek, then in English; the displays inside the carriage print the next stop in both alphabets too. The floor sits level with the platform, so wheelchairs, strollers and rolling luggage roll on without a ramp. Each stop has a sheltered platform and a real-time arrivals board.

A pairing that works for a single beach day: take T6 from Syntagma down to Pikrodafni, change to T7 for the coast, and get off at Edem, Kalamaki or Glyfada. Syntagma to Voula end to end runs about an hour, and the whole chain fits inside one ninety-minute fare provided the transfer at Pikrodafni doesn't drag.