Six of the world's best metro systems – in pictures

Buenos Aires Known as the Subte, the Buenos Aires metro was the first underground in the Spanish-speaking world and the fourth in the Americas (after Boston, New York and Philadelphia), writes Vicky Baker. Linea A was the network’s first line, starting at Plaza de Mayo, home to the pink government house where Evita gave her famed balcony speech, and running under the grandest thoroughfare, Avenida de Mayo, to the copper-domed Congress building, before heading off into the suburbs. Photograph: Alamy

One of Buenos Aires’s most simple pleasures has long been travelling in the 100-year-old carriages of the A line. Whereas other branches have been modernised with automatic doors and moulded plastic seats, these original cars – made by a Belgian company for the network’s 1913 inauguration – still have polished wood interiors, tulip-shaped ceiling lights and a sought-after window seat next to the driver, where you can watch the track unfold ahead as you clatter along. Photograph: Alamy

Instead of celebrating their centenary in 2013, the Brugeoise cars are being retired on 12 January to make way for new Chinese versions. What will become of the old ones? A local politician raised few laughs when he joked about them making good firewood for an asado (Argentinian barbecue).

Campaign group Basta de Demoler (Stop the demolition) is leading the fight to save the cars. It argues that the carriages are safe and break down less than newer versions. “These carriages are unique in the world and have great heritage value,” says organiser Santiago Pusso. “There is talk of running a couple of cars on a very short circuit at weekends for tourists, but we want something living and in use, not a museum.” Photograph: Alamy

Extension work will see the A line closed for the next two months. On 30 December, residents turned out for a “photographic raid” to take final pictures of the carriages, which are continuing to see an outpouring of appreciation on social networks. Photograph: Alamy

Budapest By just six months, Budapest’s Unesco-listed Line 1 is the world’s second-oldest underground system, writes Jamie Lafferty. Built to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the arrival of the Magyars – Hungary’s founding fathers – it was completed ahead of schedule, beating Glasgow’s equivalent into third place. Yet even though it opened in 1896, 33 years after the London underground, Budapest’s Line 1 was the first to be electrified – and it has undergone few changes in the intervening years. Photograph: Alamy

A much shallower system than its nominal rivals, it originally sought to keep traffic off the scenic Andrassy Avenue. Sadly, today the street is almost overwhelmed with cars, but Line 1 trains still shunt faithfully through the underworld. Not that they’re antiquated – in rush hour carriages appear every two minutes, doors opening and slamming shut in a few violent seconds. Photograph: Alamy

Meanwhile, its stations offer an informal tour through the city – at almost every stop along Line 1 you’ll find one of Budapest’s cultural highlights. It starts in Vorosmarty Square with the outstanding Café Gerbeaud, which has been in business 40 years longer than the train line.

From there it continues deeper into the Pest side of the city, stopping at the train museum, St Stephen’s Basilica, the State Opera House, several theatres and on to Vorosmarty Street, close to the House Of Terror (terrorhaza.hu), pictured. Despite the naff name, it is one of the most impressive museums on the continent, an education in Hungary’s grim past which goes into uncomfortable detail about the dual Nazi and Communist occupations during and after the second world war.
Photograph: Catherine Karnow/Corbis

From there Line 1 rumbles on towards the serene City Park, past a series of hulking art galleries and Heroes’ Square (Hosok Tere), which is filled with bronze statues of legendary Magyars (pictured) in whose mighty name it was constructed.
Photograph: Tibor Bognar/Corbis

Athens The Athens Metro stands out in more ways than one: although among the most modern underground systems in Europe, it is sited in an archaeological treasure trove that is not only the world’s richest but its oldest, too, writes Helena Smith. Layers of Greek history greet commuters as they are whisked through tunnels cut deeper into the subsoil than in any other subway in any other city. Photograph: Alamy

One of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects, construction of the metro, which began in the early 1990s, yielded around 50,000 ancient artefacts in what soon became the single most important archaeological excavation ever conducted in Athens. Since opening in the run-up to the 2004 Olympics, the network has also served as an underground museum, with stations in the capital’s historic centre exhibiting finds exactly where they were unearthed. Well-displayed in a way that few museums manage, the treasures make travel on a system that is also almost always pristine (and continues to be the pride of Greeks) especially enjoyable. Photograph: Alamy

At Syntagma station (pictured), at the network’s heart on line 2 (the red line), visitors can view Roman baths, ancient aqueducts, and marble tombstones. A 2,000-year-old beehive and a mosaic from the fifth century AD are also exhibited in what was once an ancient necropolis. Archaeologists have also included a geological cross-section – each layer of earth testimony to a different period reaching back to pre-historic times. Photograph: Alamy

Further down the line at Acropolis station (pictured), commuters can see the remains of ancient graves, dwellings and roads. Antiquities that once adorned the monumental fifth-century BC Parthenon, designed by the master sculptor Phidias, are also on display alongside objects used in daily and public life from the 17th century BC to the 12th century AD. It is one of the longest continually inhabited sites in Athens, with workshops and baths also in evidence.

The richness of the Athens subway does not end here: take line 3 (the blue line) and for the price of a €1.40 ticket and you will see an abundance of cultural gems at stations along the way. Photograph: Alamy

New York New York’s subway system opened on 27 October 1904, borne out of the original elevated rail system that operated in Manhattan from the 1870s, writes Douglas Rogers. The Great Blizzard of 1888 convinced urban planners to put the transit system underground, and while they could never have foreseen the havoc storms such as Hurricane Sandy would create over a century later, they had the right idea.

Today the New York subway system is the most extensive and elaborate in the world, with 24 routes serving 468 stations over a distance of 209 miles. And despite its complexity – Italian designer Massimo Vignelli’s iconic 1972 map of it resembles the wiring on the Space Shuttle – it runs smoothly and efficiently 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in (mostly) comfortable and modern air-conditioned cars. Beat that, London. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

The many different designations for trains and routes – by colour, number, letter or destination – can be confusing to the visitor. New Yorkers simply call routes by the letter or number of the relevant train. Indeed, the 1974 subway hijack movie, The Taking of Pelham 123 (remade in 2008 with Denzel Washington) might have been a bigger hit had it simply been titled The Taking of the 6 Train. (Intriguingly, the city transit authority banned 6 Trains from leaving Pelham at 1.23pm – lest it frighten passengers.) Photograph: Alamy

If New York is the crossroads of the world, the Q Train, coloured sunflower-yellow on its route sign, and formally known as the Broadway Express, is arguably the most global in its reach. The modern version of 1920s “Brighton Beach Line”, it starts in the lively Greek neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, and heads west into Manhattan, where early stops include Central Park at Fifth Avenue, Hells Kitchen at 47th and 7th, and the bright lights of Times Square in the heart of Midtown.

From here it follows Broadway’s diagonal cross-town course, stopping at Herald Square (Macy’s, The Empire State Building), Union Square and Canal Street – the frenetic heart of Chinatown. Photograph: ZooMMER Travel Photography/Alamy

From Chinatown it rattles under the East River into Brooklyn, where stops include the swanky new Barclays Center stadium on Atlantic Avenue, and serene Prospect Park, before finally delivering you at Moscow on the Hudson – the affectionate name for the heavily Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach, and nearby Coney Island (pictured) on the Atlantic shore. From Greece to Russia, via Broadway and Chinatown in one short journey.
Photograph: Tips Images/Alamy

Standard subway cars for this and other routes are spacious vinyl-floor carriages with orange plastic bucket seats, although there are older cars around, notably those on the much-maligned C Train, whose prison-grey benches and faded tin-can sidings will be 53 years old by the time the MTA retires them in 2017. If you want to travel vintage, go all the way and look out for the increasingly popular “Nostalgia” rides offered by the MTA and the Brooklyn-based New York Transit Museum: beautifully preserved retired carriages from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, replete with rattan chairs and gas lighting make commemorative trips to the Upper East Side, or to Coney Island. Grand Central Station celebrates its centenary this year, and several nostalgia trips are planned. Now may be a good time to book: see mta.info/mta/museum for details. Photograph: Preston Rescigno/Getty Images

Paris The Paris Métro began service in 1900 on what is today the sleek Line 1, running east to west and passing many of the city’s greatest landmarks, from Bastille and Louvre to Tuileries and Concorde, writes John Brunton. Now it is the busiest line for Parisians and millions of tourists, with modern state-of-the art stations and fully automated trains with no drivers. By contrast, very little has changed on Line 2, which began service just a little later, at the end of 1900, and by 1903 was already serving the 25 stations it links today. Travelling on Line 2 is more like a flashback to an older time as it slowly loops its way across the north of Paris in a wide arc from Nation as far as Porte Dauphine. Photograph: lillisphotography/Getty Images

Line 2 heads out of Nation in sober fashion, passing Père Lachaise, the world’s most-visited cemetery and resting place of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde, and Couronnes, scene of the Métro’s worst disaster, with 84 passengers dying in a train fire just a year after the line came into operation. Architecture fans should not miss Colonel Fabien, where Oscar Niemeyer designed the landmark French Communist Party headquarters while at the next stop, Jaurès, the Métro theatrically becomes aerien for four stops, providing elevated views of the canal Saint-Martin and Bassin de la Villette. Photograph: Alamy

From Anvers you can walk up the steep streets of Montmartre to the Sacré-Coeur, while Pigalle stops right opposite the Moulin Rouge. From then Line 2 becomes far more respectable, traversing the chic residential 17th arrondissement, before arriving at Charles de Gaulle Etoile, the station below the Arc de Triomphe. Final stop is Porte Dauphine, whose entrance is marked by one of the two remaining art nouveau aedicules (entrances) designed by Hector Guimard. Photograph: View Pictures/UIG via Getty Images

Apart from its tourist sights, Line 2 is also a journey through the multi-ethnic city that Paris has become. Get off at Belleville and you are in the middle of a heaving Chinatown. Barbès-Rochechouart has a huge morning street market beneath the métro aerien packed with north African traders, while the exit at La Chapelle brings you out in a colourful Little Sri Lanka.
Photograph: Alamy

The rich and varied architecture of the Moscow metro makes it one of the city’s top tourist sights, writes Phoebe Taplin. Marble, bronze, stained glass and chandeliers decorate the stations. Moscow’s is the busiest underground system in Europe, carrying around 9 million people on weekdays, and the system is still expanding. Only Tokyo and Seoul carry more passengers. After the 1917 revolution, the Russian capital moved back to Moscow and the city’s population quadrupled. Not wanting to be outdone by Paris or London, Stalin opened the first part of the metro in May 1935; volunteers had dug the tunnels using spades and pickaxes. Photograph: Siegfried Layda/Guardian

Kropotkinskaya station on the historic Sokolnicheskaya line (line 1) was built as an underground hall for a planned Palace of the Soviets. Elegant 10-sided columns flare to support the cavernous ceiling. The architect, Alexey Dushkin, inspired by Egyptian temples, defended his design with the words: “They had palaces for the pharaohs; we have palaces for the people.” Photograph: Alamy

The Kremlin and Red Square are two stops away at Okhotny Ryad, where visitors can change to the Zamoskvoretskaya line to see another of Dushkin’s stations: Ploshchad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square station) is lined with life-size bronze statues of model Soviet citizens, from parachutists to poultry farmers. Thousands of passengers every day touch the nose of the border guard’s dog for luck – now it shines like gold. At the same interchange, Teatralnaya takes its theme from the Bolshoi Theatre overhead, with gold and white porcelain figures of musicians for decoration. Photograph: Asia Photopress/Alamy

Art deco Mayakovskaya, two stops north, is Dushkin’s masterpiece and one of the system’s most beautiful stations. Above high arches with slim pillars of steel and pink marble, a series of oval mosaics presents an idealised 24 hours, with swimmers, gliders or engineers portrayed against lilac, sunlit clouds or the Kremlin clock at midnight. Deep underground, many stations doubled as air raid shelters in the second world war, and Stalin addressed party leaders here in 1941. Photograph: Martin Thomas Photography/Alamy

The next stop intersects with the 1950s Koltsevaya “ring line”, which takes palatial architecture to a whole new level. Travel clockwise to take in excessive Komsomolskaya, whose gold-backed ceiling panels provide a crash course in Russian military history, from Alexander Nevsky’s battle against the Swedes in 1240 to the Red Army victorious in 1945 Berlin. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian