Athinios Port, Santorini: Getting to Fira, Oia and the Beaches
Every ferry to Santorini lands on the same concrete shelf at the foot of the cliff. How to get up to your village by bus, taxi, transfer or hire car, what the bus costs in 2026, and what to sort out before you book the hotel.
Athinios port is Santorini's only ferry harbour, a quay and a row of cafés at the bottom of the caldera cliff, about 8 km south of Fira. There is no village around it and one road out, which climbs the rock in hairpins. The bus to Fira costs €2.70, Oia and the beaches mean a change, and taxis run out fast, so below is each route from the port with 2026 fares.
Athinios port to Fira, Oia, Perissa and Kamari at a glance
Times are by road with the port road clear. Add half an hour when a large ferry has just unloaded its cars and coaches, which in July and August is most of the afternoon. Bus fares are the full KTEL fares published on 15 October 2026.
| From Athinios to | By road | Taxi or transfer | KTEL bus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fira | About 8 km | 20 min | Direct, €2.70 |
| Firostefani, Imerovigli | About 11 km | 25 min | Change at Fira, €4.90 |
| Oia | About 19 km | 40 to 60 min | Change at Fira, €4.90 |
| Kamari | About 10 km | 30 min | Change at Fira, €4.90 |
| Perissa | About 15 km | 30 min | Change at Fira, €5.40 |
| Airport | About 7 to 9 km | 25 min | Change at Fira, €4.90 |
Distances vary by a kilometre or two between sources, so treat them as rounded. Fares from the KTEL Santorini price list of 15 October 2026. A connecting fare is simply the two tickets added together: there is no through ticket.
Athinios port bus: KTEL fares and how it works in 2026
The public bus is run by KTEL Santorini and it is the cheapest way off the port by a long way. The buses park along the road to the left as you walk off the ship and wait for the main arrivals, then leave for the Fira bus station once they are full. Bags go in the hold. They fill in the order people reach them, so walk off briskly rather than waiting for the crowd to thin.
Athinios bus timetable: why you will not find it online
KTEL publishes timetables for its regular lines, Fira to Oia, Kamari, Perissa and the airport, but not for the port. The buses between Fira and Athinios are set each day around the ferry schedule and posted at the Fira bus station the day before. Arriving, you do not need the timetable, because the bus is timed to your boat. Leaving, check the board in Fira the day before or call KTEL on +30 22860 25404, and take a bus that gets you down at least 45 minutes before your sailing.
KTEL Santorini fares from the port, discounts and the night rate
The full fare between Athinios and Fira is €2.70, and the onward legs from Fira cost €2.20 to Oia, Imerovigli, Kamari and the airport and €2.70 to Perissa. KTEL's own price list gives 50% off for large families and travelers with a disability, 25% off for students, and a 25% surcharge between 00:30 and 05:00, which takes the port bus to €3.40 for the late arrivals. Ticket machines in Fira and Oia take cards and phone payments, but on board and at the port carry cash, ideally coins.
Older guides still quote €1.60 to €2.20 for the port bus. Those fares are out of date.
Athinios port to Fira
Fira is the easy one. The bus goes direct, in about 20 minutes, for €2.70, and drops you at the bus station in the middle of town, a short walk from most hotels on the eastern side and five to ten minutes from the caldera edge. A taxi or transfer takes the same 20 minutes when the road is clear. What it does better is the last few hundred metres: the bus station is on the main road, and a hotel on the cliff is often down a flight of steps from there.
Walking from the port to Fira is about 8 km uphill on a road with no pavement and coaches on the bends, 1 h 30 to 2 h 30 with nothing to see but the next hairpin. Nobody does it twice.
Athinios port to Oia
Oia is at the far northern tip, about 19 km away, and no bus goes there direct from the port. You take the port bus to Fira, then the Oia bus from the same station: €4.90 in total and about an hour with the change, longer if the Oia bus is full and you wait for the next one, which happens at the end of a summer afternoon. With a big suitcase, that change is where the bus stops being a bargain.
By taxi or transfer, reckon on 40 to 60 minutes. Oia is also the village where the car stops furthest from the door: the centre is pedestrian, and many cave hotels are down long stairways from the drop-off point. Ask the hotel where the driver leaves you and whether someone carries the bags.
Athinios to Perissa and Kamari: the beach side
Kamari and Perissa are on the flat black-sand coast on the east and south-east, away from the cliff, and once the car is out of the port hairpins the roads there are fast. By taxi or transfer, both are about 30 minutes. By bus, the October 2026 timetable sends you through Fira: €4.90 to Kamari, €5.40 to Perissa, and a detour north before you head back south.
KTEL's spring 2026 price list carried a direct fare from Athinios to Perissa and to Kamari, but those lines do not appear in the October timetable, and no guide confirms how often they run. If you are staying on the beach side, ask the driver at the port whether a bus is going your way before you board one for Fira.
Athinios port to Imerovigli, Firostefani and the airport
Firostefani and Imerovigli run on from Fira along the rim, so the bus route is the same as for Oia but shorter: port bus to Fira, then the Oia or Imerovigli bus, €4.90 in total. The Imerovigli stop is at the top of the village, and the cliff hotels are 5 to 10 minutes away on foot down paths and stairs. With luggage, a transfer is worth it here more than anywhere except Oia.
There is no dependable direct bus from Athinios to the airport. The bus route goes through Fira, €2.70 then €2.20, and the wait for the connection can take longer than the ride. A taxi or transfer takes about 25 minutes. If you are stepping off a ferry and onto a plane the same day, book the transfer and leave a wide margin: a late boat and the queue up the hairpins can cost you an hour between them.
Taxi and private transfers from Athinios port
Santorini has only a few dozen licensed taxis for the whole island, and the ones waiting at Athinios are gone within minutes of a big ferry docking. Each takes four passengers at most. Uber works on the island, but it books the same local taxis, so it does not solve the shortage. We could not find an official fare between the port and the villages, and the prices quoted online run from €30 to €80 for the same trips, so agree the price before you get in. The central taxi number is +30 22860 22555.
A pre-booked transfer is the reliable version: a fixed price, a driver with your name on a sign at the bottom of the gangway, and someone who has tracked the boat if it is late. It is the right call after dark, with children or with heavy bags, and for anywhere north of Fira.
Car rental at Athinios port
Several rental agencies have desks at the port and will hand over a car on the quay, and that is fine if you are confident on mountain roads. The first drive is the hardest one on the island: straight up the hairpins in a queue of coaches and lorries coming off the same ship. If that sounds like a bad start, take the bus or a transfer to Fira and pick the car up there or at the airport the next morning.
A car makes the most sense if you are staying on the beach side or in the inland villages, where buses are thin in the evening. In Oia and Fira, parking is the problem, not driving. There is parking at the port itself, behind the quays.
Athinios port and your Santorini hotel: sort the transfer before you book
Most people choose a Santorini hotel for the view and find out about the port later. Do it the other way round. Athinios is isolated at the foot of the cliff, and the hotels with the famous view sit on its rim, often down steps that no car can reach. Before you pay, ask the hotel whether it runs or books a transfer from Athinios and what it costs. Then ask where exactly the car stops, and whether someone carries the bags down the steps.
If you arrive by sea, Fira is the easiest base: one direct bus, a short taxi ride, and plenty of hotels on the flat side of town for anyone who would rather not carry bags down the cliff. Kamari and Perissa are easy by car and awkward by bus. Oia is the most beautiful and the hardest from the port. Our guide to where to stay in Santorini goes village by village.
Athinios port departures: how early to arrive and where to wait
Be at the port 45 minutes to an hour before departure on foot, and earlier with a car to load. The road down is the same single road, and when two or three boats are due in the same hour it backs up from the top of the hairpins. Buses from Fira leave on a schedule set around the sailings, so take the earlier bus if you have a choice.
Departures and arrivals for the day, with live vessel positions, are on the port authority's page for Athinios, santoriniports.gov.gr. Ferries are late often enough, especially in a meltemi, that two hours on the quay is common, and the port is a poor place to spend them.
If you have checked out early, stay up in Fira and come down late. Book July and August sailings two to three months ahead, and keep a screenshot of your e-ticket QR code: the mobile network on the quay slows to nothing when a full ship is boarding. The crossings themselves, with timings and operators, are on our pages for Athens to Santorini, Mykonos to Santorini and Crete to Santorini.
Athinios port services: cafés, ATMs, Wi-Fi and luggage storage
The port is open around the clock. The port authority lists a single-storey terminal with a waiting room and toilets, a covered waiting area outside, ATMs, Wi-Fi, parking, first aid and step-free access. Along the road facing the quay are a few cafés and snack bars, mini-markets, ferry agency kiosks where you can buy or print tickets, and the car rental desks. It is enough for a coffee and a bottle of water. It is not somewhere to spend an afternoon.
Where to leave luggage before an Athinios ferry
We could not confirm any left-luggage office at the port, and neither the port authority nor the guides we checked name one. The practical answer is your hotel: almost all of them keep bags after checkout, so you can spend the day on the island and collect them on the way down. Fira also has paid luggage storage near the centre, which is handy if your hotel is in Oia and you want an afternoon in town before the bus to the port.
Athinios or the Old Port of Fira: Santorini's two ports
The Old Port, at the foot of the cliff directly below Fira, is the one in the photos, with the cable car, the donkeys and 588 steps zigzagging up the rock. Ferries do not use it. It is where cruise ships send their passengers ashore by tender and where most caldera boat trips start. Athinios is 8 km further south, with its own road. A transfer booked to the wrong one means crossing the island.
The two came together briefly in the summer of 2026. On 27 July 2026 a wall collapsed beside the Karavolades steps that link the Old Port to Fira, the path was closed, and from the next day cruise passengers on excursions were landed at Athinios and taken up by coach. The path reopened on 3 August, and the cap on the share of cruise passengers routed through Athinios, around 30%, was put back. If you are on a cruise, your shore excursion may still start at Athinios, so check where your tender lands.
Athinios port map and address
Athinios sits on the inner, western coast of the island, below the stretch of cliff between Fira and Megalochori, and its one road climbs to the island's main road at the top of the cliff. For a satnav, "Athinios Port, Santorini" works, and the port authority gives its address as Mesaria, Airport Road. The port fund's office answers on +30 22860 28362. Seeing it on our map of Santorini makes the rest of this page obvious: villages on the rim, beaches on the far side, the port underneath. If you are flying one way and sailing the other, Santorini airport is on the flat east side, about 25 minutes from the port by road.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: top, a SeaJets catamaran at Athinios, by Norbert Nagel, CC BY-SA 3.0. KTEL coach at Fira, by Jean Housen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Old Port of Fira, by Zde, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Questions people ask about Athinios port
What is the main port in Santorini?
Athinios, on the west coast below the caldera cliff, about 8 km south of Fira. Every ferry and high-speed boat to Santorini uses it, from Piraeus, Mykonos, Crete and the rest of the Cyclades. It is also listed as Thira port or the New Port on tickets and booking sites.
Are there two ports in Santorini?
Two that matter, used for different things. Athinios is the ferry port. The Old Port below Fira, reached by the cable car, the donkey path or 588 steps, is where cruise ship tenders and excursion boats land. Ferries never use the Old Port, so a transfer booked there is a transfer to the wrong place. Ammoudi, below Oia, is a small harbour for tavernas and boats to Thirassia.
Is Athinios port the same as Thira port?
Yes. Thira is the official Greek name of Santorini, so ferry companies and booking sites list the same port as Thira, Santorini (Athinios) or Santorini New Port. If your ticket says any of those, you sail from and arrive at Athinios.
How do I get from Athinios port to Fira?
By KTEL bus, which waits after the main arrivals and takes about 20 minutes to the Fira bus station for €2.70 in 2026. A taxi or pre-booked transfer takes about the same time if the road is clear, and up to an hour when a large ferry has just unloaded. Walking is not realistic: the road climbs the cliff in hairpins for about 8 km.
Is there a bus from Athinios port to Oia?
Not a direct one in the October 2026 timetable. Take the bus to Fira for €2.70, then the Oia bus for €2.20, which makes €4.90 and about an hour with the change. A taxi or transfer takes 40 to 60 minutes depending on traffic out of the port.
Can you get a taxi at Athinios port?
Sometimes, but do not count on it. Santorini has only a few dozen taxis, they carry four people at most and the ones at the port are taken within minutes of a big boat docking. Uber works on the island through local taxis, with the same shortage. If you need a car waiting, book a transfer or ask your hotel before you sail.
How early should I be at Athinios port for my ferry?
45 minutes to an hour before departure on foot, more with a car. The road down has one lane each way and jams when several boats are due, and buses from Fira leave on a schedule set by the ferry times, so take the one before the one you think you need.
Is there luggage storage at Athinios port?
Not that we could confirm. The port authority lists a waiting room, toilets, cafés and ATMs, but no left-luggage office, and none of the guides we checked names one. Ask your hotel to keep your bags after checkout, which almost all do, and collect them on the way down.
Is there anything to do at Athinios port?
No. There is a strip of cafés, snack bars and ticket kiosks along the road at the foot of the cliff, and the view up the caldera wall, but nothing to fill more than half an hour. If you have time before a ferry, spend it in Fira and come down late rather than early.
