Athens to Thessaloniki

In the spring of 480 BC the Greek allies sent ten thousand hoplites north to the Vale of Tempe, the gorge between Olympus and Ossa, to stop the army of Xerxes. Warned that the Persians could go round it, they fell back south to Thermopylae, the narrow pass between Mount Kallidromo and the sea. Hellenic Train's Intercity from Athens to Thessaloniki passes both places, and it takes neither pass: it goes under the mountains. Since November 2003 the line has run through two long tunnels at Tempe, and since 2019 it has crossed Kallidromo in a tunnel of 9.3 km, the longest railway tunnel in the Balkans.

What the line gives you instead is the breadth of mainland Greece in an afternoon: the farmland of Boeotia, the great flat plain of Thessaly, and the last hour along the coast below Olympus, the highest mountain in the country, with the Thermaic Gulf on the other side.

It is the country's main line, double-track and electrified the whole way, and today it carries two Intercity trains a day in each direction. The run takes about five hours ten minutes, a locomotive hauls the coaches, and each train has a buffet.

Trains leave from Athens station, still known as Larissa Station after the city it was built to reach. The line climbs through the northern suburbs to Oinoi, where the suburban branch to Chalkida turns off, and then crosses Boeotia, calling at Thiva and Livadeia with Parnassus rising to the west.

At Tithorea the new line begins. Opened in 2019, it replaced the old single track over the Bralos pass, which still exists but carries no trains, with two long tunnels: Kallidromo, 9.3 km, and Othrys, 7 km in twin bores, with the junction station of Lianokladi, for Lamia, between them. North of Othrys the line crosses the drained bed of Lake Xyniada to Domokos and comes down onto the Thessalian plain.

Paleofarsalos is the change for Kalambaka and Meteora, now by Hellenic Train bus, and Larissa is the capital of Thessaly. North of it the train goes through the Vale of Tempe in tunnels and comes out on the coast. The old line along the shore at Platamonas was abandoned in 2004 and can still be seen beside the new one. For the last hour the train runs below the eastern slopes of Olympus to Katerini, joins the line from Florina at Platy, where Athens and Thessaloniki were first linked by rail in 1916, and follows the Thermaic Gulf into Thessaloniki.

The trains

The Intercity is a locomotive and a rake of coaches. The engines are Hellas Sprinters, the class 120 electrics built by Siemens and Krauss-Maffei, of 5,000 kW, the main locomotives on the route. Italian ETR 470 tilting trains ran some services from May 2022; Railway Gazette reported in September 2025 that they had been taken out of service, and that because works had cut the line's capacity, Hellenic Train had reduced the service from four train pairs a day to two.

Tempi, 2023

On 28 February 2023 Intercity 62 from Athens collided head-on with a freight train south of the Vale of Tempe, near Evangelismos, and 57 people were killed. Services were suspended, resumed in part in April 2023 and in full between Athens and Thessaloniki in December 2023. The Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority published its final report on 27 February 2025. It found that the station master at Larissa set the passenger train's route by hand and did not put a set of points in the correct position, and it named poor maintenance of the signalling, staff shortages and the lack of an independent accident investigator among the underlying causes, with seventeen recommendations to the infrastructure manager, Hellenic Train and the regulators. A criminal trial of 36 defendants opened in Larissa on 23 March 2026.

Two Intercity trains run each way a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. Both call at Oinoi, Thiva, Livadeia, Tithorea, Lianokladi, Paleofarsalos, Larissa, Katerini and Platy.

Athens to Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki to Athens

Good to know:

• For the views, take the morning train. IC 50 passes Olympus and the coast in daylight all year; IC 56 reaches that stretch after dark.
• For Meteora, a Hellenic Train bus leaves Paleofarsalos at 10:30, after IC 50 calls at 10:01, and reaches Kalambaka at 12:30. The return bus leaves Kalambaka at 16:50 and reaches Paleofarsalos at 18:50, in time for IC 57 to Athens at 18:56.
• Expect delays. Hellenic Train posts them on its live notices page; on the day these times were checked, both morning trains were running more than 40 minutes late.

Times as of November 2026, from Hellenic Train's Athens–Thessaloniki timetable, valid since 15 September 2025, checked against its booking engine. Check your date on hellenictrain.gr (opens in a new tab) before you travel.

Hellenic Train sells tickets through its online booking engine and at station ticket offices. A one-way adult fare from Athens to Thessaloniki is €43 in Class B and €52.50 in Class A, and you can choose your seat when you book online. The booking engine also offers reduced fares for passengers aged 12 to 24, for over-65s, for children aged 4 to 12, and for return journeys.

Fares checked November 2026 in Hellenic Train's booking engine for a date the following week; euros.

Interrail and Eurail passes are valid on the Intercity. Hellenic Train's own Interrail page says pass holders travel on its network with no extra fare and no supplement or reservation charge. A seat reservation is still required: Interrail's table of railway companies lists the Hellenic Train Intercity as included with reservation mandatory, and Hellenic Train makes the reservation at its station ticket offices when you show the pass and your passport or identity card. Residents of Greece can use only a Global Pass on Greek trains.

For this journey alone, a pass is not worth buying. The full one-way fare is €43, and an Interrail Greece Pass pays only if you also ride other trains. The Greek Islands Passes, which add ferry days, are a different calculation.

Checked November 2026 against hellenictrain.gr (opens in a new tab) and interrail.eu (opens in a new tab).

The line starts and ends in Greece's two largest cities, and two of the country's great landscapes, Meteora and Olympus, are an easy step off it, from Paleofarsalos by bus and from Katerini by road.

The evening train from Athens reaches Thessaloniki after eleven at night, so a hotel within walking distance of the station is worth having. The Capsis Hotel is one, 400 m away on Monastiriou Street.

Planning this trip and stuck on something, or spotted a time, fare or detail that has changed? Send us a message about Athens to Thessaloniki. We read every one, and we update this page when something has changed.