page_title: Thessaloniki Metro
section_title: Line 1 (Base Project)
hierarchical_section_title: Thessaloniki Metro / Network / Line 1 (Base Project)
caption_attribution_description: English: Excavations at Aghia Sofia station, Thessaloniki, as part of the construction of the Thessaloniki Metro.
context_page_description: The Thessaloniki Metro is an underground rapid-transit system under construction in Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Estimates for the cost of the megaproject are €1.62 billion for the main line and €640 million for the Kalamaria extension, for a total of €2.26 billion. The project is primarily funded with loans from the European Investment Bank and the European Regional Development Fund and funds from the Greek government. Construction by a Greek-Italian consortium is overseen by Attiko Metro, the Greek state-owned company which oversaw construction of the Athens Metro.
  Proposed during the 1910s and first seriously planned in the 1980s, construction of the main line began in 2006 and on the Kalamaria extension in 2013. Although the initial proposal included three extensions to the main line, the latest Attiko Metro proposal seeks to combine the two westward extensions as a loop; the system will be made up of the main line and the Kalamaria and Evosmos extensions. The system under construction has 18 stations and 14.4 km of tunnels. Detailed planning of the airport extension went to tender in March 2019, while the Western loop went to tender in August of the same year.
context_section_description: What is known as the Base Project (Greek: Βασικό Έργο) began in 2003, when Attiko Metro and the Greek government agreed to cooperate on a public works project Government support was instrumental, since lack of government support for the 1988 proposal was the primary reason it had failed. The project issued a request for tender in 2004–2005, and the successful Greco-Italian consortium (which included AnsaldoBreda) began construction in late June 2006. An alternate consortium, Macedonian Metro (Greek: Μακεδονικό Μετρό), was barred by the European Court of Justice from participating in the tender because it changed its composition after the tender proceedings began (violating EU law). The project was budgeted at €1.05 billion ($1.18 billion), with 25 percent funding from the Greek government and 75 percent funded by loans from the European Investment Bank and the European Regional Development Fund. The latest available Attiko Metro financial data put the official estimated cost at €1.28 billion ($1.44 billion). An April 2019 update raised the estimated cost to €1.62 billion ($1.83 billion). Line 1 runs within the municipality of Thessaloniki, the core of the Thessaloniki urban area, calling at 13 stations.
  It has two parallel single-track tunnels on a 9.5 km (5.9 mi) route between Neos Sidirodromikos Stathmos (N. Sid. Stathmos, at the city's New Railway Station) and Nea Elvetia, with Pylaia depot further southeast. Although construction began in 2006, major archaeological finds in the city centre delayed the project considerably. Disputes between Attiko Metro, the city council, and archaeologists reached Greece's Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, in 2015. The original schedule had Line 1 operational by 2012. Attiko Metro redesigned several stations in a solution which became known as "antiquities and metro" (Greek: και αρχαία και μετρό). Some finds discovered on the line will be put on display at permanent in-station exhibitions, while the major discoveries at Venizelou will make up the world's first publicly-accessible open-air archaeological site contained in situ within a metro station. 
  Construction of the tunnels was completed on 31 July 2018, 12 years and one month after breaking ground. That day, the architectural work on Line 1 was reported as 80 percent finished. In August 2018, tracks and electronic signalling equipment began installation. The line will enter service in its entirety, between N. Sid. Stathmos and Nea Elvetia, in 2020 but will not stop at Aghia Sofia and Venizelou, which will open at a later date. By February 2019 construction on the main line was 95 percent completed and platform screen doors were beginning to be installed, while the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection was planning a competition to fill the first 28 Thessaloniki Metro employee positions.
  Despite the progress, in September 2019 Greece's new conservative cabinet announced a further 28-month delay to the project, pushing the opening date from November 2020 to April 2023 and citing costly archaeological works at Venizelou as the reason. The new Minister of Infrastructure and Transport announced that the government had decided to scrap the previous plan to keep the archaeological discoveries in situ within the station at Venizelou, choosing instead to disassemble them and re-assemble them at a later stage, noting that excavation costs had exceeded €130 million ($153.37 million), more than the cost of the new Acropolis Museum. Thessaloniki's new conservative mayor, Konstantinos Zervas, as well as Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis, supported this move. Mitsotakis also announced at the Thessaloniki International Fair that a new archaeological museum would be built specifically to house archaeological artefacts unearthed during the construction of the metro. The new head of Attiko Metro accused archaeologists of "looking to the past; we need to look forward".
  The decision to disassemble the archaeological finds, dubbed a "Byzantine Pompeii", was strongly criticised, and a citizens' group has taken 
caption: Archaeological excavations at the construction site of Aghia Sofia station in September 2018.
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