Santorini (Oia)

A cliff-top village of white houses and blue-domed churches above the caldera, famed for sunsets.

The island is the rim of a huge volcano. About 3,600 years ago one of the largest eruptions in recorded history blew out the middle and left a sea-filled bowl called a caldera, with cliffs around it. Santorini is a popular holiday place today, and it is still the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean.

A volcano you can live on

The caldera is roughly 12 km by 6 km, with steep cliffs up to 300 metres high around the water. Villages such as Fira and Oia sit on the cliff edge looking over the sea. The water in the centre is deep, about 400 metres, so boats can anchor in the bay.

The name Santorini is short for Saint Irene, after an old church in the village of Perissa. In ancient times the island was called Kallístē, "the most beautiful one", and later Thera.

The town frozen in ash

At Akrotiri, diggers who started in 1967 found part of a Bronze Age town buried by the eruption's ash. They uncovered streets, squares, three-storey houses and walls up to eight metres tall, with huge storage jars and stone staircases still in place.

Wall paintings kept their colours under the ash. They show antelopes, boats with leaping dolphins, and saffron gatherers. The town even had pipes with running water, among the oldest ever found. It is often compared with Pompeii, and some people link the eruption to the legend of Atlantis.

Oia and its history

Oia was a village of sea captains who sailed cargo ships to places like Alexandria and Russia, and it grew rich in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The two-storey captains' houses high up still show that past.

A strong earthquake in 1956 damaged part of the village.

On the globe

The model shows white houses and blue domes on a cliff above the sea. Look for the curved cliff edge of the caldera.