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The port of Piraeus: an invitation to travel

Audio 03:36

Ferries, docked at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece, Wednesday April 6, 2022 (illustrative image).

© AP - Thanassis Stavrakis

By: Joël Bronner Follow

4 mins

Port of Athens, Piraeus is the most important port in Greece and in 2019 it also became the first port in the Mediterranean, in terms of container traffic.

A development following its management, since 2016, by the Chinese Cosco, which has become the majority shareholder of the Port Authority of Piraeus, in the context of the Greek debt crisis.

In a country where tourism accounts for around a fifth of the economy, Piraeus plays another fundamental role, however: that of the most important passenger port in the eastern Mediterranean.

Some 10 million travelers embarked - or disembarked - there in 2019.

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From our correspondent in Athens,

Almost 6,000 years ago, long before Athens became Athens, Piraeus was an island.

The changing landscape has since moored Piraeus to the European continent.

The island of yesterday has thus gradually become the port of Athens and a maritime pivot, which today allows the connection between mainland Greece and almost all of its islands.

At the head of the maritime transport companies Euroseas and Eurodry, Aristides Pittas enjoys doing, in addition to the portrait of Piraeus, the tourist promotion of his country:

“The port of Piraeus has a terminal for containers which is very dynamic but it is also a crossroads for ships leaving mainland Greece for the islands.

You know that here we have the most beautiful islands in the world… More than 100 inhabited islands, where people want to go on vacation, the port of Piraeus is therefore, from this point of view also, an important hub.

»

Islands and islets, Greece has nearly 6,000 in all, of which a minority – some 230 to be precise – are inhabited.

Inhabited and therefore easily visited.

A goodwill for a country, Greece, of which approximately one in five jobs depends on the tourism sector.

Crete, the Ionian Islands, the Cyclades, the islands of the Aegean Sea or the Dodecanese... visitors who contact travel agencies therefore have many island options as their destination: " 

 ”, we hear in an agency.

►

It is a little after 7am at the E7 terminal of the port of Piraeus, the gateway to the Cyclades archipelago.

A huge blue and white ferry from the " 

 " company is about to set sail for the islands of Paros, Naxos and Santorini.

A few meters further on, a second boat, of a slightly more modest size, will drop tourists off towards Syros, Tinos and Mykonos.

Travelers, like Clotilde Chevallier, 27, who comes to spend a week's vacation in Greece.

“ 

 ,” she explains.

This port of Piraeus, which she discovers, the young woman finds its dimensions impressive.

“ 

 ,” she says.

►

Like this young Frenchwoman, around 10 million passengers should pass through the port of Piraeus this year.

Some of them will travel with “SeaJets”.

In the port premises of this ferry company, the manager is also delighted with the end of two lean years:

“There are really a lot of people this summer.

For the past two years, due to Covid, a lot of people couldn't travel, so this year everyone is trying to get away.

Our boats are almost 100% full.

We even have a few more people than in 2019.”

With 33 million visitors in total, 2019 has so far been the tourist season of all records in Greece.

But as evidenced by the crowded ferries in Piraeus this summer, this peak of holidaymakers will probably soon be exceeded.

Ferries, which, seen from the quay, seem like the big restless children of Piraeus, for whom the Greek islands are the summer playground.

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