Venizelou metro station

About

Venizelou (Greek: Βενιζέλου,, lit. 'Venizelos [Street]') is a metro station serving Thessaloniki Metro's Line 1 and Line 2. The station is named after the adjacent Venizelou Street, which in turn is named after Eleftherios Venizelos, Liberal Prime Minister of Greece.

It entered service in 2024. Construction of this station had been held back by major archaeological finds, and it is designated as a high-importance archaeological site by Attiko Metro, the company overseeing its construction. The design of the station interiors was kept a secret until a day before its opening, and it was revealed in a ceremony attended by both Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

At this station, Roman Thessaloniki's marble-clad and column-lined Decumanus Maximus (main east-west avenue), along with shops and houses, was found running along the route of the Via Egnatia (modern Egnatia Street) at 5.4 metres (18 ft) below ground level. The discovery was so major that it delayed the entire Metro project for years. A historian dubbed the discovery "the Byzantine Pompeii".

Attiko Metro wanted to disassemble the road and re-assemble it elsewhere, while the City Council wanted...