The official opening of the first completed station of the Thessaloniki metro system, the 'Sintrivani-Ekthesi' station, began in the northern Greek city on Saturday afternoon with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attending.
After the prime minister's address, there will be a concert by the female band Electric String Quartet Fortissimo, made up of four women playing in Thessaloniki's symphonic orchestras.
In statements to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA), the head of Attiko Metro SA Yiannis Mylopoulos commented: "This is the first time that the completion of the Thessaloniki metro appears on the horizon."
"We picked one of the stations on the main line to take to the final stage, to complete fully, so that it can serve as a reference station, to be a station where any Thessaloniki citizen of this country can see exactly what the metro stations will look like in two years time," Mylopoulos said.
He noted that the entire system will be ready for use and already commercially operating by Christmas in 2020, while 2019 will be a crucial year for its completion since the trains will be delivered and the first test runs will take place in the summer.
He pointed out that the Thessaloniki metro uses the most cutting-edge technology, including driverless trains, and will be the most modern in Europe: "As we all know, our metro will be an automatic metro operating without a driver, which will need a period of testing of approximately a year so that the system can be calibrated and there is not half a chance in 1,000 of even the slightest incident."
Work on the Thessaloniki metro began in 2006 and it is considered the largest project currently under construction in northern Greece, with 75 pct EU funding.