The blue lagoon you sail across is a flooded volcanic crater. Beneath the ash lies a Bronze Age town, and in the legend, perhaps Atlantis itself. Fascinating facts about Greece's most photographed island.
Born from a colossal eruption
Santorini isn't shaped like a normal island because it isn't one — it's the rim of a volcano that blew its top. The Minoan eruption around 1600 BC was among the largest in human history; it emptied the magma chamber and the centre of the island collapsed into the sea, leaving the vast, cliff-ringed caldera you sail across today.
That crater is still alive. The little dark islands in the middle of the lagoon are younger volcanic cones, and their hot springs and steaming rock are a reminder that the show isn't over.
The Bronze Age Pompeii — and Atlantis?
At Akrotiri, a whole Minoan town lay sealed under metres of volcanic ash for 3,500 years: multi-storey houses, indoor drainage and astonishingly fresh wall frescoes. Yet archaeologists have found almost no bodies or gold — the residents seem to have read the warning signs and fled in time.
A sophisticated island society swallowed by the sea in a single catastrophe? Many scholars think the memory of Santorini's eruption is exactly what inspired Plato's tale of Atlantis.
Oia, blue domes and the famous sunset
The whitewashed villages of Oia and Fira cling to the caldera's edge, their blue-domed churches stacked above a 300 m drop. Every evening the crowds gather in Oia to watch the sun sink into the sea — arguably the most photographed sunset on Earth.
The white-and-blue look isn't only for Instagram: the lime wash keeps houses cool and acts as a disinfectant, and blue pigment was historically the cheapest to make.
Wine that grows in baskets, beaches in red and black
With little rain and relentless wind, Santorini's growers coil their vines into low basket shapes called kouloura, nestling the grapes inside for shelter. The volcanic soil gives the crisp, mineral Assyrtiko white that the island is famous for.
Even the beaches are volcanic — the sand comes in red and black, at Red Beach and Kamari.
On screen
Santorini has starred in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and it doubles endlessly whenever a film needs 'the perfect Greek island'.
Getting there
Flights land at Santorini (JTR); ferries link it to Crete and the rest of the Cyclades. Late spring and September are calmer and cooler than the August peak, when the caldera paths can be shoulder-to-shoulder.