How safe is Greece for travelers?

Safety and the most common scams

Greece has a low rate of violent crime. Within your first 48 hours the realistic risks are property crime and tourist-priced dishonesty.

• Pickpocketing: Most common on metro line 3 from the airport - luggage marks you out - and at the Syntagma, Monastiraki and Omonia interchanges. Groups work the doors, manufacturing a crush as people board and alight.
• Taxi drivers who ignore the flat fare: Touts approach arriving passengers away from the official rank, then refuse the meter or the regulated airport rate. Use the rank at Exit 3 and hold to EUR 40 by day, EUR 55 at night.
• Euronet ATM screens: Independent machines use a deliberately confusing interface to push dynamic currency conversion at up to a 13% markup. Decline conversion and use a Greek bank's machine instead.
• The friendship bracelet and the flower: Around the Acropolis and Syntagma, a seller ties a bracelet on your wrist or presses a flower into your hand, then demands payment loudly. Do not take the object; keep your hands down and keep walking.
• Wildfires, July and August: The risk is high and the response is organised. Civil protection sends 112 emergency alerts in English to every phone in the affected area, and the instructions in them are legally binding. If you get one telling you to leave, leave - do not wait for your accommodation to confirm it.