Athens Smart City

Successfully overcoming the challenges of the 21^st century, the city of Athens and the Region of Attica deploy the technology to improve the lives of its people and its visitors by making things easier, faster, and more reliable. The City of Athens provides 55 online services through its central electronic services site.

Free Wi-Fi, mobile and responsive websites as well as apps make Athens a “Smart City”.

Free wireless internet access can be enjoyed in many of the capital’s public spaces: Syntagma square, Kotzia square, Agiou Pavlou Street at Thiseio, the Korean Market Park (opposite Gazi), Kerameikos Square, the Technopolis of Gazi, the Metro stations, in Banks and at countless hotels, cafés and bars. You will find also free Wi-Fi in many places in Athens suburbs and Piraeus.

Important information on Athens in your pocket

Useful Apps for Smartphones

The official Athens airport app is useful not just for checking your flight status, arrivals, and departures, but also for getting up-to-date information on how to get to the airport, parking information, and even special offers for the fantastic airport shopping. Through the Athenspotlighted program, you are provided with a free city card, which can be used at various cultural sites, museums, art galleries, restaurants, nightclubs, and a wide variety of selected stores all over Athens. All participating enterprises and organizations, a list of benefits and discounts, as well as all relevant information, can be found at the programme’s dedicated site.

Make sure that you validate your free city card upon your arrival at the designated areas in the airport. The card provides you with special discounts and benefits at the city’s best spots.

The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, making the most of modern technologies, created in January 2016, a new application for mobile devices called “Trip2Athens”. This application provides useful information to the visitor regarding hotel facilities, tourist attractions, restaurants, cafés, bars, places to have fun, various events taking place in the city during the trip, and so on.

The Athens bus system app pinpoints your location and shows you nearby bus stops, as well as which buses stop there, their schedule, and their route.

Athens’ Metro app allows you to buy tickets via credit card, and then validate them once you get to the platform! The best part of this app is that you can use it for ALL means of public transport in Athens, by purchasing a Regular Ticket valid for 90′.

Foursquare and Tripadvisor apps help you find the best Greek food wherever you are. They will help you find anything from the nearest supermarket, the closest bars and pastry shops, reports on local traffic, and what films are playing at local cinemas.

Athens Book also includes information on the closest open pharmacies, though in an emergency “Doctor Anytime” can find you a doctor. It also includes information on transport – the nearest metro/tram stops, and any possible strikes.

In the “Safe Water Sports” app you can easily find: all Greek beaches with photos, GPS location, a brief description, and other information such as: (deep/shallow water, sand/pebbles/stones, parking, access for the disabled, public shower, if it is organized with sunbeds/umbrellas, exposed to winds, etc.), all and only the licensed water sports centers with full information, water sports regulations and safety tips, marinas (private and public) and the main Facilities & Services offered, hospitals and the competent Port Authorities.

All the museums of Greece are now available in the “Greek Museums” application.

Public transportation

Athens Metro: the second oldest underground system in the world (Line 1 started operation in 1869) is quick, cheap, clean, easy, and secure. Works of modern art and Archaeological finds obtained during Metro’s construction are exhibited in many stations.

Athens currently has three subway lines with 64 stations on 85,3km of track, serving approximately 1.400.000 passengers daily, and 2 tram lines with 48 stops on 25.9km of routes. The average distance between stops is 460 meters and there are four (4) stops giving the option to transfer to the Metro, namely the stops of Syntagma, Neos Kosmos, Fix, and SEF.

300 bus lines span the Athens Metropolitan Area. Athens features the largest fleet of natural gas-powered buses in Europe: 614 buses. Buses network amounts to over 6.942 km in length. The network of Electric Buses of Athens and Piraeus Region consists of 22 lines.

Proastiakos: The Suburban railway connects the Athens airport with the Athens Central Railway Station and Acharnes Railway Center and through them to the National Railway network. Trains run 7 days a week from 5:26 am to 21:44.

24-hour express buses: all buses leave passengers at the Departures Level and depart from the Arrivals Level, between Exits 4 and 5. There are four routes:

• Χ93: Kifissos KTEL (long-distance buses) Station – Airport
• Χ95 : Syntagma – Airport
• Χ96: Port of Piraeus – Airport
• Χ97 : Eliniko Metro Station – Airport

PWSN (Persons With Special Needs)

All metro stations are fully accessible to disabled persons with elevators on every level and platform. There are more than 270 precast concrete platforms at bus and trolley stops. Almost all buses and trolleys are provided with a kneeling system. Tram lines are also fully accessible.

Athens disabled access is generally quite good. Even Acropolis is accessible to PWSN. Attica’s museums offer special services to disabled visitors. Visitors with disabilities from both EU and non-EU countries and an individual accompanying them are entitled to free admission on presentation of the required identification. The Museum Guide is often available in Braille (Greek and English).

You can touch the exhibits, replicas of originals displayed in the museums of Greece in the Tactual Museum, housed in the Lighthouse for the Blind in Kallithea. It is one of five museums of this kind in the world.

The city of Athens is preparing a long-term project to make Athens as smart as possible.