Santorini island travel tips
The famous Greek island of Santorini has a rugged and dramatic landscape that bears testament to the apocolyptic force of a volcano about 3,500 years ago, and is one of the most popular of the Greek islands for holiday travel.
Santorini, officially known as Thira, is the most southerly of the Cyclades chain of Greek islands and its geology has an unforgettably wild majesty shaped by the volcanic eruption around 1450 BC.
Housing architecture on the island is classically Greek, sugar cube houses and blue domed churches providing a thousand postcard travel photo opportunities for tourists with a camera.
You can find all different types of travel and holiday accommodation on Santorini including hotels, villas, apartments, studios and camping sites for travellers on a budget.
Santorini travel tip: … A new dive site has evolved near the port of Santorini where the Greek cruise liner Sea Diamond sank after hitting submerged rocks on April 6, 2007. The 22,412 tonne, 143 metre Sea Diamond had about 1,600 passengers and crew on board and sank about 15 hours after hitting rocks about half a nautical mile offshore in Santorini’s sea-filled volcanic crater.
If you’re looking for a cheap Greece flight, hotel, car rental or holiday package bookings for your travel to Santorini, visit our Travel Shop.
Santorini holiday travel accommodation tips
Much of Santorini’s ambience is arid and unique.
Dazzling white villages sit atop red, brown and green volcanic rocks, creating a dramatic and stark panorama within the tepid waters of the Aegean. Sunset views are breathtaking.
The outer slopes of the volcanic mountain caldera are green and soft by contrast.
The east of Santorini has a flat, fertile landscape running up to the beaches.
When choosing where you want your holiday travel accommodation, remember that the west side of Santorini is the caldera side, meaning you’ll be directly above the volcano atop a cliff which plunges dramatically to the sea.
Santorini travel tip: … Wear sensible travel shoes when visiting the island as there are numerous stairs or pathways, and you may as well leave high heels at home.
Your Santorini holiday accommodation on the caldera side of the island might be in the villages of Ia, Firostefani, Imerovigli, parts of Megalochori or the main town of Fira.
Travel and holiday accommodation with volcano views on this side of the island is mostly small units structured in tiers, and almost all have swimming pools.
Budget travel and holiday accommodation is impossible to find on the caldera side of Santorini because of the premium attached to the magnificent views.
On the east side of the island which slopes gently to the shoreline, the main villages are Perissa, Perivolos, parts of Megalochori, Kamari, Monolithos, Vourvoulos, Baxes, Karterados and Vlihada.
Santorini is famous for its restaurants and it’s worth having a week’s holiday on this Greek island just to explore the menus.
Private vessels can be moored in a small harbour at Vlihada and the best beaches can be found in the south-west corner around Akrotiri.
Santorini holiday travel tips
The crescent-shaped island of Santorini is 18 kilometres long, between two and six kilometres wide, and covers an area of 96 square kilometres.
Santorini has several inland villages unblemished by tourism and well worth exploring during your holiday travel for a tranquil taste of authentic Greek island society.
Tourism and wine, tomato and nut exports are the largest income-earners, along with shipments of volcanic soil for the cement industry.
Note that there is no official tourist office on Santorini so it’s worth researching the island before you get there to begin your holiday travel.
About 12,000 Greeks call Santorini home, although the island is flooded with many more people during the tourist holiday season - particularly July and August.
Temperatures at this time of the year are in the mid-20s.
Travel tip … the weather is a bit cooler during the shoulder months but still very pleasant, and there are fewer tourists competing for the beach sands and cafe tables.
Santorini is connected by ferry to Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Rhodes, Kos, Crete and the Cyclades islands of Milos, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros, Sifnos, Syros and Tinos.
The capital of Santorini is the town of Fira, a bustling tourist centre visited by most cruise ships. Fira has many beautiful churches and quaint, cobbled streets.
Fira is built on the cliff edge of the volcano’s crater, 275 metres above the water.
Directly below that cliff is the landing port for ferries and numerous cruise ships. Tourists have a choice of either walking 300 metres to the top with a donkey carrying their luggage (about 800 steps up a zigzagged path) or taking it easy by using the cable car. Fira can be overrun with tourists and backpackers in the peak season from June to August and the waiting list for a cable car can sometimes be a few hours.
Most people go by cable, which takes about two minutes and provides some unforgettable views. Have your camera or video ready. Beware that many donkeys like to leave their deposits on the walkways, sometimes with a pungent odour, and quite a few travellers end up scratched and bruised when the animals decide to buck them off.
Every evening from 4.30pm to 6pm there are buses taking tourists from Fira to the town of Oia to watch one of the most famous ocean sunsets on earth.
Oia has about 1,000 residents living in large neo-classical homes that have been rebuilt. This town has less bars and is more sedate than Fira. Directly below Oia is the port of Ammoudi, which can be reached via a climb of 300 steps, and small boats provide tours of the nearby island of Thirassia.
Santorini travel tips
Santorini has an airport with flights to and from Athens and many countries.
Santorini is in the far south of the Cyclades chain of Greek islands scattered across the Aegean Sea east of the Peloponnese and south-east of the coast of Attica.
The Cyclades island group stretches as far as Samos and Ikaria to the east and is bounded by the Cretan Sea to the south.
The nearest islands are Ios, Folegandros, Sikinos to the north, Crete to the south and Anafi and Amorgos to the east.
The island of Amorgos, which has been described as the hidden jewel of the Cyclades, has a mountainous interior ideal for hiking. There are excellent beaches, particularly on the north-west tip of the island about 12 kilometres from the main town, Hora. The stark white monastery of Moni Hozoviotissis on the east coast of Amorgos was built into a cliff face during the 11 century and is visually stunning.
There are about 1,400 islands in the seas south of Athens. Most are dry and rocky.
Santorini is 127 nautical miles from the port of Piraeus and a slow ferry trip usually takes about nine hours - about six hours on the faster “flying dolphin”. Overall, Santorini has a 70 kilometre coastline.
The Cyclades island group receives little rainfall. Water is scarce on Santorini and must be shipped in.
Average temperatures in January are 12 degrees Celsius and 27 degrees in August. However, temperatures can peak around 40 degrees from June to August.
The main Santorini beaches on the east coast have black sands and are called Perissa, Kamari and Monolithos. The Red Beach near Akrotiri usually has less tourists.
Santorini is actually made up of the main island body of Thira, with two much smaller islands, Thirasia and Aspronisi, to the north and south.
In the middle of these are the two volcanic islands of Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni.
Santorini holiday accommodation and travel tips
Santorini was once a single island called Stroggili but the island’s central volcano erupted around 1450 BC, tearing the island apart.
The eruption created tidal waves that all but wiped out the advanced Minoan civilization of Crete 110 kilometres to the south, and some scholars link the blast to the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.
The two volcanic islands of Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni are remnants from later small eruptions over 2,000 years.
One of the Aegean’s most important prehistoric settlements is Akrotiri on the south-west tip of Santorini. Akrotiri dates back to the fourth millennium BC and, following a history as one of the region’s major ports, the town was abandoned at the end of the 17th Century BC because of ongoing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.