Guide · the ferry port

Athinios port, Santorini, and the road above it

8 min read

Athinios is Santorini's only scheduled-ferry port, on the south-west coast about 8 to 10 km south of Fira. Reported drive time is about twenty minutes, and the scheduled bus takes roughly twenty-five. One hairpin road serves it, and that road is the bottleneck at every ferry arrival. Cruise ships do not normally berth here.

Two ports do two different jobs on this island, and people lose ferries by confusing them. Athinios is the working one: concrete, ramps, coaches, and a road cut into a cliff above it.

What Athinios is

Athinios is Santorini's commercial port and the only one with scheduled passenger ferries. The quay is carved out of the cliff base on the south-west coast, facing the same stretch of water the cruise ships lie in.

The published distances disagree politely. Wikipedia puts it approximately 10 km south of Fira. Travel sources give 7.5 km as a straight figure and about 9.3 km as the actual drive. We say about 8 to 10 km south of Fira, roughly a twenty-minute drive, and about twenty-five minutes by scheduled bus.

If you arrive in Santorini by sea and you are not on a cruise ship, this is where you land. There is no second option and no ferry berth anywhere else on the island.

It is also the port people mean when they say the new port, which is confusing, because the old one is not a ferry port at all any more.

The road, which is the whole story

A single road serves the whole port. It works its way up to the clifftop in tight switchbacks cut across steep, multi-coloured volcanic rock, and every foot passenger, hire car, coach and taxi that lands here has to use it.

They all use it in the same ten minutes, because that is how ferries work. That is the bottleneck, and it is not a traffic-management failure. It is geometry.

The practical consequence is simple. Twenty minutes is a twenty-minute drive on a quiet afternoon. On a ferry arrival it is however long the stack on the hairpins takes, and nobody can tell you that number in advance.

Heading the other way, down from Fira to catch a departure, you meet that same stack coming at you. It is the one moment in a holiday where running late has a hard, expensive consequence.

The numbers

Getting to Athinios, and out of it

Fares and times below are published market figures with their sources and the date we saw them. We do not run road transport and none of these numbers are ours.

From	How	Published time	The honest risk
Fira	KTEL bus, timed around the ferries	About 25 minutes	Fare reported at about €2.70 on the TripAdvisor Santorini forum, seen 25 August 2026. Buses meet arriving ferries and fill fast. The printed board at Fira bus station is issued a day ahead and is more reliable than any online timetable.
Fira	Taxi, or a transfer booked in advance	About 20 minutes	Forum guidance puts a taxi at about €25 to €35 to Fira. The island's licensed fleet is estimated at 30 to 40 vehicles with no ride-hailing app, per the same TripAdvisor threads, seen 25 August 2026. A taxi here is something you booked, not something you find.
Oia	Bus via Fira, or a direct transfer	Not published as a direct figure; longer than the Fira number	The KTEL network funnels through Fira bus station, so by bus this is two legs and a connection. Forum guidance puts a taxi from Athinios to Oia at about €40 to €55, seen 25 August 2026.
Kamari, Perissa and the south-east	Bus via Fira, or a transfer	Not published as a direct figure	Same connection problem pointing the other way. Budget for the change at Fira, and remember that a bus at capacity does not wait for the people it left behind.
Fira Old Port (Skala)	Cable car up, road down. Or by sea, directly.	Three to five minutes of cable car, plus the queue, plus the drive	No road reaches Skala at all. With the stepped path shut by the 28 July 2026 closure order, everything now funnels through the cable car, and santorinidave.com reports peak queues of 60 to 90 minutes, seen 25 August 2026. Going by water skips the climb and the switchbacks together. That is what our Old Port to Athinios crossing is for.
Anywhere, on foot	Walking	Not viable	Eight to ten kilometres with a couple of hundred metres of climb, on a hairpin road with no footpath and coaches on it. Nobody should attempt this with luggage, or without.

If your ferry is the last connection before a flight, book the road transport in advance and give yourself an hour you do not think you need. The road is the part that goes wrong.

Which Santorini port do you actually want?

The single most common planning mistake on this island is arriving at the right time at the wrong quay.

You are…	Your port	Why
Arriving or leaving by ferry	Athinios	It is the only port with scheduled passenger ferries. Nothing else is an option, at any hour.
On a cruise ship as an independent passenger	Fira Old Port (Skala), by tender	Ships anchor in the caldera and tender in. There is no berth for them and no road down to the quay. Fira Old Port explained covers what happens once you are standing on it.
On a ship-organised shore excursion since 28 July 2026	Athinios, then a coach	After the stairway closure, organised groups have been directed to Athinios and bussed up to Fira. The previous cap of roughly 30% of cruise passengers through Athinios was suspended.
Taking a water taxi	Skala or Ammoudi, usually	Both are small-boat quays. Athinios is a working ferry port, so a boat there is a connection you need, not a landing you would choose.
Joining one of our catamaran cruises	Your exact meeting point is confirmed with your booking	A car collects you from your hotel and brings you back afterwards, so you never have to find a quay yourself.

Old port, new port, ferry port, cruise port: four names, two places, and a taxi driver who will take you to whichever one you said.

Where the ferries go

Athinios connects Santorini to Piraeus for Athens, to the other Cyclades, and to Crete and Rhodes. Sailings range from fast catamarans that cross in a few hours to conventional overnight boats.

One published Piraeus routing calls at a string of Cyclades on the way, Thirassia among them. That is worth knowing, because it means Thirassia sits on a scheduled ferry line and is not only reachable by excursion boat.

Most visitors never register that. They see Thirassia from a cruise deck, assume it is a private-boat problem, and never look at a timetable. We take guests there on the full-day private cruise, and we are quite happy to tell you that a ferry ticket also works.

Two things we could not confirm about Athinios

The port's build year is not published in any source we checked. The Wikipedia article is a stub and gives no construction date.

There is no reliable facilities inventory either. We cannot tell you what is open on the quay, what hours it keeps, or whether there is anywhere to leave a bag. Both are UNKNOWN, and we would rather write that than reprint a list somebody guessed. If either matters to your plan, ask us on WhatsApp and we will find out instead of inventing it.

Ready when you are

Connecting a ship to a ferry?

Send us the ferry time, the date and how many of you there are, with bag count if you are carrying cases. We will tell you whether a boat makes the connection safely, and we will say no when the answer is no.

Check availability & book

Call the harbour office+30 698 977 1888

Common questions

Is Athinios the same as the Old Port?

No, and confusing the two costs people ferries. Athinios is the road-served ferry port on the south-west coast, about 8 to 10 km south of Fira. Fira Old Port, or Skala, is the cruise tender quay directly below Fira with no road at all. Different places, different logic, different day.

From Fira to Athinios port, possible by bus?

Yes. KTEL runs Fira to Athinios timed around ferry departures, about 25 minutes, much of it crawling down the zigzag road. The fare is reported at about €2.70 on the TripAdvisor Santorini forum, seen 25 August 2026. Schedules are posted a day ahead at Fira station and change with the ferry timetable.

Can you walk from Athinios port to Fira?

No. It is eight to ten kilometres with more than two hundred metres of climb, on a single hairpin road with no footpath and coaches using it. There is no pedestrian exit from the port in any practical sense. Take the bus, a taxi or a transfer you booked before you sailed.

When is the last bus from Athinios port?

Athinios services are ferry-driven rather than clock-driven. A bus meets arriving boats, including late ones, and the printed schedule at Fira station is issued a day ahead. There is no dependable last bus you can plan around weeks in advance, so a midnight arrival is a transfer you pre-book.

What ports do cruise ships dock in Santorini?

None of them dock. Every large ship anchors in the caldera and tenders passengers to Fira Old Port. Athinios is the exception rather than the rule: ship-organised excursion groups have been landed there and coached to Fira since the 28 July 2026 stairway closure, with the previous Athinios share cap suspended.

Do boat tours depart from Athinios?

It is a working ferry port rather than an excursion quay, so small boats mostly use Skala and Ammoudi. For our own cruises, your exact meeting point is confirmed with your booking, and a car takes you there from your hotel and brings you back at the end of the day.

Santorini Boat Tour - Water Taxi is a catamaran cruise and water taxi operator based in Fira, Santorini.

Updated August 2026