Deepest Metro Stations in the World
Most subway stations sit a few stories below the street. A handful go so much deeper that riding to the platform can take eight minutes and leave your ears popping like an airplane landing. Blame geography and history: high riverbanks, mountainous cities, and the Cold War habit of building stations deep enough to survive a bomb all pushed engineers to dig far below the usual tunnels.
The payoff is a set of stations that read less like transit stops than underground cathedrals, wrapped in mosaics and served by some of the longest escalators on Earth. These are the ten deepest metro stations in the world, counting down to the record holder more than a hundred meters underground.
10. Ploshchad Lenina Station - 67 metres (220 ft)
Ploshchad Lenina, on the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line of the Saint Petersburg Metro, opens the list at 67 meters down. It arrived in June 1958, its surface vestibule built into the Finlyandsky rail terminal, the same Finland Station where Lenin returned from exile in 1917 to give a speech now immortalized in a mosaic in the station's hall. Architect A.K. Andreev gave it a deep pylon design and a plain red-and-white scheme, a deliberate step away from Stalinist excess. A 2006 lighting overhaul brightened the place considerably.
9. Washington Park Station - 79 metres (260 ft)
At 260 feet (79 meters) down, Washington Park is the deepest transit station in North America and the only fully underground stop on Portland's MAX Light Rail. It opened in September 1998 with the Westside extension, tunneled deep to pass under the West Hills between downtown and the Oregon Zoo. The platform holds a near-constant 50 F (10 C) thanks to the surrounding rock, and a display of core samples walls it in a 16-million-year geologic timeline. High-speed elevators, not escalators, carry riders to the surface.
8. Park Pobedy - 84 metres (276 ft)
Park Pobedy is the deepest station in the Moscow Metro at 84 meters, and it holds a bigger prize: the longest escalators in Europe. Each one runs 126 meters and 740 steps and takes about three minutes end to end, long enough that you cannot see the top from the bottom. Begun in 1986 and opened in 2003, it interchanges the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya and Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya lines across mirror-image platforms in red and grey, designed by Nataliya Shurygina and Nikolay Shumakov. Its builders trimmed costs with a clever method of concrete-filled steel blocks.
7. Admiralteyskaya Station - 86 metres (282 ft)
The deepest station in Saint Petersburg took decades to finish. Planners knew the city center needed a stop near the Hermitage and the Admiralty, but the protected historic surface turned siting an exit into a battle, and Admiralteyskaya finally opened in December 2011, long after the tunnels around it were built. At 86 meters, it sends riders down a 125-meter escalator, one of the longest anywhere, to an intermediate landing before a second descent. For years, trains rolled straight through the finished but unopened platform, and locals took to calling it the ghost station.
6. Universytet (Kyiv Metro) - 87 metres (285 ft)
Universytet opened on the Kyiv Metro's Sviatoshynsko-Brovarska Line in November 1960, named for the Taras Shevchenko National University next door. Its pylon trivault hall, red marble pillars, and rows of white marble busts follow the grand Stalinist template of the era. During the 2022 Russian invasion the busts of Russian figures were covered over, and the station, an official architectural monument, took on the role every deep Kyiv stop now shares in wartime: bomb shelter.
5. Hongtudi Station - 94.47 metres (309.9 ft)
Before Hongyancun stole its crown, Hongtudi was the deepest station in China. Set under the Jiangbei District of Chongqing, it interchanges Lines 6 and 10 of Chongqing Rail Transit, and it grew deeper in stages: Line 6 opened in 2012 at over 60 meters, and the Line 10 platforms of 2017 pushed the low point to 94 meters. Moving between its levels is a genuine ordeal, reportedly handled by more than 90 escalators threaded through the complex, a figure that has turned the station into something of an internet curiosity.
4. Zoloti Vorota - 96.5 metres (317 ft)
Named for the medieval Golden Gate of Kyiv above it, Zoloti Vorota opened on December 31, 1989, and is routinely called one of the most beautiful stations in Europe. Architects Borys and Vadym Zhezherin, along with Mykola Zharikov, scrapped the planned utilitarian design for something that evokes an ancient temple of Kievan Rus, lined with 80 mosaics of the era's princes and saints. At 96.5 meters it transfers to Teatralna on the line above, and like its neighbors it served as a shelter after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
3. Arsenalna (Kyiv Metro) - 105.5 metres (346 ft)
For decades Arsenalna was billed as the deepest metro station in the world, and at 105.5 meters it is still the deepest single station outside China. Opened in 1960 near the old Kyiv Arsenal factory, it is strikingly bare: engineers hit tough soil and water problems and scrapped the central hall, leaving a London-style layout with decorative-only pylons. Its escalator descent, at over five minutes, is the longest in Kyiv. During the 2022 invasion, thousands sheltered on its platforms through missile and drone attacks, the deep earth overhead doing exactly what Soviet planners once intended.
2. Pyongyang Metro - 110 metres (360 ft)
The Pyongyang Metro is the odd entry here, ranked by the depth of its system rather than a single named platform. North Korea reports its tracks running more than 110 meters underground, deeper than any verified station below it on this list, though the figures come from the state and are hard to check independently. What is clear is the intent: with no above-ground sections and blast doors in its halls, every station doubles as a bomb shelter. Opened between 1969 and 1972 under Kim Il Sung, the metro holds a steady 18 C (64 F) year-round, and the escalator ride to the surface runs about three and a half minutes. Its showcase stops, like Puhung, are marble halls of chandeliers and revolutionary murals.
1. Hongyancun Station - 116 metres (381 ft)
The deepest metro station on the planet sits beneath a hill in Chongqing's Yuzhong District, its lowest point 116 meters down, roughly a 40-story building turned upside down. Opened in January 2022 on Line 9 and joined by Line 5 in late 2023, Hongyancun took the world record from Kyiv's Arsenalna. The numbers verge on comic: its two main entrances differ in elevation by 141 meters, the escalator descent from the upper entrance takes around eight minutes, and the elevator drops fast enough to pop your ears like a plane. In 2025 the station won Project of the Year at the international tunnelling awards, and Chongqing now stages a stair-climbing vertical marathon up its 860 steps. Most passengers just take the lift.
Digging Ever Deeper
These stations share a cause: engineers rarely dig this deep by choice. A river's high bank, a mountain city's vertical sprawl, a protected historic center, or a government's demand for bomb-proof shelter forces the tunnels down. The depth record itself has quietly migrated from the former Soviet cities that pioneered deep-metro building to the mountains of China. Hongyancun holds the title now, but Chongqing keeps threading track through its hills, and the next record may already be under construction. The only sure thing is that somewhere right now, a commuter is spending eight minutes on an escalator just to catch a train.
