Κάτω Πετράλωνα · district
Lower Petralona scores 31 out of 100 for violent crime — above-average crime, on a scale where 50 is the average for Greece. It is home to about 3,802 people at 16,579 people per km².
The score is absolute, not a ranking: 50 is the offence rate for Greece as a whole, 100 the safest end of the scale and 0 the least safe, and every doubling of the rate costs the same number of points wherever you are. Regional units are scored from Eurostat's police-recorded offence rates per 100,000 inhabitants. Greece publishes nothing finer, so municipalities and districts share out their region's measured rate by how built-up they are and by documented local reporting — treat those two levels as an estimate, not a count of reported crime.
Kato (Lower) Petralona is the half below the Line 1 railway, running down towards Pireos street. It is more ordinary than its upper twin - 1960s apartment blocks, a central square with a church and playgrounds, local shops rather than destination tavernas - with a small bar scene of its own on Keiriadon and a pedestrian stretch of Thessalonikis under the railway that serves residents rather than visitors. Petralona station sits on the dividing line.
Quiet residential streets with a handful of busy bars. It is calm rather than lively, and the emptier blocks towards Pireos are the ones to avoid walking alone late.
Only worth it if you want low prices and a genuinely non-touristed base, and you are happy with two metro stops to the centre. There are few hotels; most stock is short-let flats. Not a first-trip choice.
Reputation against reality. The two halves of Petralona get lumped together in travel writing, which flatters the lower half and undersells the upper. Kato Petralona is fine and unremarkable, not charming - visitors booking 'Petralona' for the neoclassical-lanes-and-tavernas picture should check which side of the tracks the address is on.
Streets and squares: Keiriadon · Thessalonikis (pedestrian stretch under the railway) · Petralona metro station · Pireos