General informations
Tel prefix: 22860
Area: 83 km2, 50 x 10 km wide
Altitude: 555 m
Inhabitants: 9650 and 500.000 visitors in Summer.
Santorin takes its name from a small church situated on the farther end of the neighbouring Thirassia (or Firassia) island that fishermen were seeing from far. Contraction of Santa Irini-Santarini-Santorini, becoming Santorin in French.
Situated at 130M of the Piraeus, it is accessible by boat or plane. It occupies an old volcano of the caldeira type. The cliff, seen from the Harbour, offers an impressive spectacle due to its height; it reaches actually more than 250 m.
The Santorin island counts 13 villages: Akrotiri, Emporio, Episkopi, Thyra, Ia, Imerovigli, Kamari, Katerados, Megalochori, Messagonia, Messaria, Monolithos, Perissa, Pyrgos and Vothonas.
Some history
2000 BC: important population of Minoan origin.
1500 BC: volcanic implosion, of which remains only the edges, the present island is in half-moon shape, with the caldeira at the centre with a small island, Kameni.
1100 BC: life comes back, and Phoenicians, Dorians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians and Turks follow each other.
1956: a seism destroys the capital, Thyra.
1970: discovery of the site of Akrotiri\r
3600 years ago, the volcano crater, of 2000 m high, has collapsed following a terrible explosion. This eruption gives birth to the neighbouring islands: Thera, Therasia, and Aspronis. A great part of the island so did disappear under waters. Then again, 1600 years BC about, other volcanic eruptions happened, similar to the one that destroyed Pompei. The last eruption dates back from 1950.
At 12 km from the capital, one may visit the ruins of the antique city of Akrotiri, buried under 50 m of ashes, quite like Pompei. The searches began in 1967. One discovered there a complete Minoan agglomeration dating from 2nd millenary BC.
The archaeological museum of Santorin has been brightened in 2005 to shelter the Coree of Selladas, a colossal archaic statue of 3m high discovered in 2000 on the island.
Some pictures