Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, is getting a brand new subway system that will celebrate why the project was held up for decades.
The system is built to show off important archaeological discoveries made during the construction. These ensured that the build was behind schedule.
Building the railway started in 2006, and was originally scheduled to be completed in 2012.
It is only the second metro in Greece after the one in its capital Athens. This was inaugurated in 2000.
France 24 reports that some companies involved in the railway’s construction went bankrupt during Greece’s near-decade-long debt crisis.
Tunneling followed ancient commercial routes through the center of the port settlement. These have been continuously inhabited since the time of the ancient Greeks.
Work exposed a Roman thoroughfare, old burial sites, water and drainage systems, mosaics and inscriptions. Also discovered were tens of thousands of artifacts that spanned centuries through Byzantine and Ottoman rule, AP reports.
The underground network consists of 13 stations, including a section of the marble-paved Roman thoroughfare at Venizelou Station in the centre.
The metro was first put forward more than 100 years ago, and residents have for years reportedly used the project as a ‘punchline for bureaucratic delays and undelivered promises’.
Officials say the cost of the system so far has reached €3bn billion euros for the completed first line of the subway, as well as most of a second line.
This is currently under construction and set to be delivered in a year. The system is fully-automated and driverless, the first system of its kind in Greece.
It is operated by Thessaloniki Metro Automatic (THEMA), which is a Franco-Italian consortium.
The services will handle an estimated 250,000 passengers a day in a city of more than one million people.
Greece’s Aktor, Italy’s Webuild and Japan’s Hitachi Rail made up the construction consortium.