Santorini

VillagesCyclades,Greece

A Greek island that is the rim of a flooded volcano — white villages on a 300-metre cliff, a Bronze Age town under the ash.

September·Peaking now

Jun–Sep

The island runs at full stretch: the funicular working late into the night, and ferries from Piraeus arriving one after another all day. The sea is at its warmest in August, near 25.5°C, and that is when the Assyrtiko harvest usually begins, among the earliest in Greece.

Year-round The drowned caldera, the white villages along its rim and the buried Bronze Age streets of Akrotiri are here every day of the year; the warm sea, the open terraces and the boats are not.

Santorini is Greece's most famous island: whitewashed houses and blue-domed churches lined up along a cliff edge, hundreds of metres above a deep blue sea. But that famous view holds a secret most visitors miss: the cliff is the wall of a giant volcano. Thousands of years ago an enormous eruption collapsed the middle of the island and the sea poured in; the deep blue bay where the ferries glide today is the old crater itself. The famous towns, Fira and Oia, sit right on its rim. Most houses are built not on the cliff but into it: a hotel room here is often a cool cave carved into the rock, its terrace the roof of the house below, its door opening straight onto the sea. Inside the towns everything is within walking distance: narrow, shaded lanes wind between the white houses, bougainvillea spills over the walls, and through every gap between buildings the same view returns: that huge blue bay, far below. In the evening everyone flows to Oia; the sun sets straight into the crater, the white walls turn gold and then pink, and applause rises from the crowd. And Santorini is more than the postcard; the island has a lesser-known side, and that is where it gets really interesting. One of its best experiences is the three-hour walk from Fira to Oia along the crest of the crater, the bay on one side and the island's quiet interior on the other. The beaches look like no beach you know: the sand is volcanic, jet black or deep red. At Kamari you walk into the sea from black sand; at Red Beach a wall of rust-coloured rock rises behind you. A boat takes you to the small volcanic islet in the middle of the bay: walking the rim of its crater you still catch the smell of sulphur, and on the way back you swim in a cove where warm springs mix into the sea. Akrotiri, in the south, is another world altogether: a real town the volcano buried in ash 3,600 years ago, dug out again by archaeologists. You wander its streets, its two-storey houses still standing; and strangest of all, not a single human body has ever been found. Everyone, it seems, sensed the disaster coming and left in time. Even the wine at dinner is part of the story: the vines curl on the ground like baskets to survive the wind, and they produce Assyrtiko, the island's famous sharp white. That is what stays on the way home: everything beautiful here was made by a disaster, and the volcano is still there, just sleeping.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Aim for May, June or late September over the July–August peak — the sea is already warm enough to swim, but the fierce heat and the thickest crowds have not yet arrived.
The hot springs off Nea Kameni are only lukewarm, and the iron-rich water stains fabric — swim in a dark suit you won't mind turning a faint rusty orange.
The stepped caldera paths are steep and slippery — wear proper shoes rather than sandals, and skip the mule rides up from the old port, which are hard on the animals.

Things to do

1
Watch the caldera sunset from Imerovigli
Walk out to the caldera path at Imerovigli an hour before dusk, where the same sunset arrives over the same islets without Oia's crush. When the sun drops the whole rim goes quiet; you can hear the applause carry across the water from Oia, and you are not standing in it.
2
Hike the steaming crater of Nea Kameni
Take a boat from the old port to the black cinder island at the heart of the caldera, then climb the bare lava path to the crater rim. Warm rock and faint steam vents underfoot are the plainest reminder that this volcano only sleeps.
3
Explore beneath the ash in Akrotiri
Walk the streets of the Bronze Age city sealed by the eruption, now sheltered under a roof; see the two-storey houses, storage jars, and drainage channels that froze everyday life three thousand years ago.
4
Sail past the crimson cliffs of Red Beach
The old land path to Red Beach has been closed for years after repeated rockfalls, so the safest way to see it is from the water. Caldera boat tours slow off the cove, where the iron-red cliff drops straight into clear sea — proof that the whole island is raw volcano.
5
Taste Assyrtiko beside the basket vines
Book a tasting at one of the island's small wineries and try Assyrtiko poured beside the vines it comes from — bone-dry, salt-edged, and grown on nothing but night dew. Many cellars sit right on the caldera rim, so the view competes with the wine.
6
Walk the cliff path from Fira to Oia
Follow the caldera-edge trail that links Fira to Oia, roughly ten kilometres along the rim past Firostefani and Imerovigli. The path rises and dips over the old crater wall with the blue bay always at your side, trading the sunset crowds for whitewashed chapels and long, empty stretches of view.

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Nearby

100 km