URTRIPS: Piraeus

Piraeus Greece

Here is the text adapted into standard American English: Piraeus is a port city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens urban area, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) southwest of downtown Athens (the municipality of Athens), along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf. According to the 2011 census, Piraeus had a population of 163,688 within its administrative limits, making it the fifth-largest municipality in Greece and the second-largest within the urban area of the Greek capital, after the municipality of Athens. The municipality of Piraeus and four other suburban municipalities form the regional unit of Piraeus, sometimes called the Greater Piraeus area, with a total population of 448,997. It is part of the Athens urban area. Piraeus has a long recorded history dating back to ancient Greece. The city was founded in the early 5th century BC, when this area was chosen to become the new port of classical Athens and was developed as a model harbor, concentrating all of Athens’s import and transit trade. During the Golden Age of Athens, the Long Walls were built to fortify Athens and its port (Piraeus). As a result, it became the main harbor of ancient Greece but declined gradually after the 3rd century BC. It grew again in the 19th century, after Athens was declared the capital of Greece. In the modern era, Piraeus is a large, busy city and an integral part of Athens. It is home to the country’s largest harbor and has all the characteristics of a major maritime and commercial-industrial center. The Port of Piraeus is the main port of Greece, the largest passenger port in Europe, and the second-largest in the world, serving about 20 million passengers annually. With a throughput of 1.4 million TEUs, Piraeus ranks among the top ten European ports for container traffic and is the leading container port in the Eastern Mediterranean. The municipality hosted events in both the 1896 and 2004 Summer Olympics held in Athens. The University of Piraeus is one of the largest universities in Greece and has the country’s second-oldest business school, as well as the oldest academic department in the field of finance.

Recommended airport

Eleftherios Venizelos Intl (ATH)

Nearby destinations