Santorini

Interesting facts

Bronze Age Akrotiri had twin sets of clay pipes for hot and cold water and indoor toilets, among the oldest such utilities ever found; the hot water was probably volcanic.

The Bronze Age eruption has often been proposed as a possible inspiration for the legend of Atlantis, though archaeology does not support the story itself.

In the last 5,000 years only a handful of eruptions, among them Tambora in 1815 and Taupo around 181 AD, have thrown out more material than Santorini's.

The name Santorini comes from Saint Irene; the Arab geographer al-Idrisi recorded it as Santurin around 1153–1154.

Ancient writers say that before it was called Thera the island bore the name Kallistē, meaning the most beautiful one.

The dark Kameni islands in the caldera are young: the first broke the sea surface in 197 BC, Nea Kameni appeared in 1707, and the last eruption ended in 1950.

A Byzantine chronicler records an eruption in 727 that was read as a divine warning and helped Emperor Leo III justify his campaign against religious icons.

According to Herodotus, after a seven-year drought Thera sent out colonists who founded Cyrene on the coast of what is now Libya.

Santorini's vines draw most of their water from dew, and their grape yields are only about a tenth to a fifth of those usual in France or California.

The island's sweet Vinsanto is made from sun-dried grapes, and its finest bottlings spend up to twenty or twenty-five years ageing in barrel.

Why it is worth it

Santorini is what remains of a volcano that blew itself apart. The islands of the group — Thera, Therasia, Aspronisi and the young, dark cones of Nea and Palea Kameni in the middle — form a broken ring around a flooded caldera, and on the main island the inner cliff falls more than 300 metres straight to the sea. The wall is a cross-section of the volcano's history: bands of red, black and grey lava and ash, capped by the pale layer of pumice left by the great Late Bronze Age eruption some 3,600 years ago, which threw out some 60 cubic kilometres of material and buried the island under tens of metres of tephra.

That same eruption preserved Akrotiri on the south coast, a prosperous Bronze Age town whose multi-storey houses, drains and streets were sealed under ash before the blast. Its wall paintings — scenes of daily life, ritual, animals and ships — are among the most vivid images to survive from the Aegean Bronze Age. Much quieter is Ancient Thera, the ruins of a later Greek town on the ridge of Mesa Vouno, almost 400 metres above the sea, with views down both coasts.

The villages along the caldera rim are the island's best-known sight: Fira, the main town, and Oia at the northern tip, their white houses and blue domes built down the cliff edge. Many are cave houses cut into the soft volcanic rock, which insulates them against summer heat and winter cold. Inland, Pyrgos keeps the shape of a fortified medieval hill village, its lanes coiling up the hill. The volcano also shaped the beaches: Red Beach under its rust-coloured cliff, and the long black-sand shores of Kamari and Perissa on the east.

The volcanic soil gives Santorini its distinctive wine. The island's Assyrtiko vines, never touched by phylloxera, are trained low into round baskets called kouloura that hug the ground, shelter the grapes from the wind and catch the night moisture — an unusual sight in the vineyards between the villages.

Getting there

Santorini International Airport (JTR) lies about 4 km from Fira, with flights from Athens and international services. Ferries run daily from Piraeus and connect with other Cycladic islands and Crete (Heraklion is about 120 km to the south by sea); most dock at the port of Athinios below the caldera cliff, from where buses and taxis climb the switchback road to Fira.

From the encyclopaedia

Santorini, officially Thira or Thera, is a Greek island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from the mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago formed by the Santorini caldera. It is the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km² (28 mi²) and a 2021 census population of 15,480. The municipality of Santorini includes the inhabited islands of Santorini and Therasia, and the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi, Anydros, and Christiana. The total land area is 90 km² (35 mi²). Santorini is part of the Thira regional unit.

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