Santorini: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Santorini is what is left of a volcano. About sixteen hundred years before the common era it erupted and the centre of the island collapsed into the sea, leaving a crescent of cliff three hundred metres high around a flooded crater eight kilometres across. The villages are all on the rim because that is the only sheltered side, and the walk from Fira to Oia along it is the most highly rated thing on the island. Ten kilometres, four hours, and no shade.
A short history of Santorini
Santorini is the rim of a volcanic crater. Around 1600 BC one of the largest eruptions in history took place here, sinking the centre of the island and burying the Minoan town of Akrotiri under ash. Excavations there began only in 1967, and three-storey houses with wall paintings were found. In the 13th century the island was ruled by the Venetians, who named it after the church of Santa Irene. In 1956 an earthquake destroyed much of the villages, and many of the inhabitants left. Since the 1970s tourism has rebuilt the island.
The ten best sights in Santorini
1FiraThe capital, on the caldera rim, and everything on the island is reachable from it
2OiaThe sunset village, 11 kilometres north, and the crowd arrives two hours before
3ImerovigliThe highest point on the rim, quieter than both, and the sunset is the same
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4Firostefani
A 15-minute walk north of Fira along the rim, and the view back is the postcard
5Skaros RockFree, a ruined medieval citadel below Imerovigli, and the path is loose rock
6Akrotiri20 euro, or 15 for the three-site combined ticket, and it is all under a roof
7Ancient Thera10 euro, closed Wednesday, and the road up from Kamari has 22 hairpins
8Museum of Prehistoric Thera10 euro, closed Tuesday, in Fira, and the Akrotiri frescoes are here
9Archaeological MuseumThe classical and Roman finds, separate from the prehistoric one, and it is small
10Tomato Industrial MuseumIn a 1945 cannery at Vlychada, and the island lived off tomatoes before tourism
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Santorini →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Santorini:
Free walking tours in Santorini
The rim walk
Santorini is what is left of a volcano. About sixteen hundred years before the common era it erupted and the centre of the island collapsed into the sea, leaving a crescent of cliff three hundred metres high around a flooded crater eight kilometres across. The villages are all on the rim because that is the only sheltered side, and the walk from Fira to Oia along it is the most highly rated thing on the island. Ten kilometres, four hours, and no shade.
- Fira · The capital was moved here from Pyrgos in the nineteenth century, and almost nothing in it is older than 1956 — an earthquake of magnitude seven and a half destroyed more than half the buildings on the island that July and killed fifty-three people. Much of the population emigrated afterwards, mostly to Athens and Australia.
- Firostefani · The blue-domed church here is the single most photographed building in Greece, and the blue is not traditional: the domes were whitewashed until the 1930s, when the government encouraged blue and white as national colours, and tourism later made it compulsory in practice.
- Imerovigli · The highest point on the caldera rim at about three hundred metres, and the name means day watch — this was the lookout that warned the island of pirate ships. Below it stands Skaros, the rock that held the island’s medieval capital until earthquakes made it unlivable in the eighteenth century.
- Skaros Rock · A citadel stood on this rock from 1207, built by the Venetians, and it was the administrative capital of Santorini for five hundred years — about two hundred houses, a church and a garrison on a crag with one path up. Earthquakes brought most of it down and the last families left around 1800.
- Oia · The cave houses cut into the cliff were built for sailors and the two-storey mansions above them for captains — Oia had a merchant fleet of about a hundred and thirty ships in the nineteenth century, trading between Alexandria and Russia. The fleet died with sail, and the village was half ruined until tourism rebuilt it.
- Ammoudi Bay · Three hundred steps below Oia, and the fish tavernas on the rock get their catch from boats that tie up beside the tables. The steps are shared with donkeys, which have right of way — the animal welfare rules now cap their loads, after years of campaigning about the weight they carried up.
What the eruption buried
The eruption that made this landscape also preserved a town. Akrotiri was a Bronze Age port of several thousand people, buried under volcanic ash and dug out from 1967 onwards — multi-storey houses, drains, painted walls, and no bodies and no valuables, which means the inhabitants had warning and left. It is twenty euro, or fifteen for a combined ticket that also covers Ancient Thera and the museum in Fira. A full day.
- Akrotiri · Houses of two and three storeys with indoor lavatories connected to clay drains under the streets — plumbing that Europe did not match again for three thousand years. No human remains have been found and no jewellery, so the town was evacuated in time. Only a fraction has been excavated; the ash cover is up to sixty metres deep.
- Museum of Prehistoric Thera · The frescoes from Akrotiri are here rather than at the site, and the one to find is the fishermen — a life-size boy holding strings of fish, painted about three and a half thousand years ago in colours that are still saturated because the ash sealed them from air. Closed Tuesday.
- Ancient Thera · A Greek and Roman city on a ridge three hundred and sixty metres above Kamari, founded by Dorian settlers in the ninth century BC. The rock face by the gymnasium carries graffiti cut by dancers at a festival of Apollo — some of the oldest inscriptions in the Greek alphabet anywhere, and distinctly obscene. Closed Wednesday.
- Panagia Episkopi · Built about 1100 by the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos, and it is the oldest standing building on the island — it survived the 1956 earthquake that destroyed the village around it. For centuries Orthodox and Catholic congregations used it in rotation, which produced litigation that ran into the twentieth century.
- Pyrgos · The capital of Santorini until the nineteenth century, and it is built the opposite way round from everywhere else here: a walled village facing inland on a hill, with no caldera view at all, because the sea was where the pirates came from. The outer ring of houses forms the wall, with no windows on the outside.
- Profitis Ilias · The highest point on the island at five hundred and sixty-seven metres, with a monastery founded in 1711. During the Ottoman period and again under German occupation the monks ran a secret school in it, teaching Greek when it was forbidden — and from the top you can see the whole island at once.
Vines, black sand and the volcano
Santorini has no rivers and almost no rain, and the vines are trained in baskets on the ground — a shape called kouloura, woven so the leaves shade the fruit and the morning fog condenses inside it. The grape is Assyrtiko and some vines are over two hundred years old on their own roots, because phylloxera cannot live in volcanic ash. The beaches are black for the same reason the wine works. A day with a bus or a boat.
- Santo Wines · A co-operative of about twelve hundred growers, which is how the island’s wine survived — the plots are tiny and scattered, and no single family could run a winery. The terrace faces straight across the caldera, which is why the tasting is booked out at sunset and empty at eleven in the morning.
- Venetsanos Winery · Built into the cliff above Athinios in 1949 and designed so that gravity did the work: grapes went in at the top, and the wine moved down through the building by falling, with no pumps at all. A chute took the finished barrels straight down to the boats at the port below.
- Estate Argyros · Some of its Assyrtiko vines are over two hundred years old and still on their own roots — phylloxera, the louse that destroyed nearly every vineyard in Europe in the 1870s, cannot survive in volcanic ash. Santorini is one of the very few places in the world where ungrafted pre-phylloxera vines still produce.
- Vlychada · The white cliffs behind the black sand are compacted volcanic ash that the wind has cut into vertical flutes and hollows, and they look carved. The old tomato cannery at the end of the beach worked until 1981 and is now a museum — the island exported tomato paste before it exported anything else.
- Perissa · The black sand is basalt ground down by the sea, and it gets hot enough by midday to burn bare feet — locals wear sandals onto the sand, which visitors learn once. The cliff at the north end is the same ridge that Ancient Thera stands on, and a steep path climbs it in about an hour.
- Nea Kameni · The island in the middle of the caldera is the volcano still building itself — it first appeared above water in 1707 and last erupted in 1950, and the ground at the crater is warm to the touch. Five euro to enter the park on top of the boat fare, and the climb takes about half an hour on loose scree.
Getting to Santorini and getting around
- Santorini Airport · 6 kilometres from Fira, one runway, and the bus to Fira costs 2.20 euro
- Athinios Port · The ferry port, 10 kilometres south, and the KTEL bus to Fira is 2.70 euro
- Fira bus station · Every route on the island starts here; fares run 2.20 to 2.80 euro
- Old Port · Cruise tenders land here, and the cable car up is 10 euro one way
- Cable car · 10 euro one way, 5 for children, and it climbs 220 metres in three minutes
Cheap eats in Santorini
The island has no fresh water to speak of and the soil is ash, so everything that grows here is small, concentrated and drought-adapted. Four things are genuinely Santorinian and protected by name: the cherry tomato, which is grown without irrigation and tastes of almost nothing else; the white aubergine; the fava, which is not a broad bean but a yellow split pea ground to a purée; and katsouni cucumbers. Add Assyrtiko wine and that is the local menu. Eight to twenty euro.
- Fira market lanes · 8 to 12 euro a plate, and almost every taverna has them
- Ammoudi fish tavernas · From about 25 euro for fish by weight, and book for sunset
- Metaxi Mas · About 25 euro, book weeks ahead, and a taxi is needed
- Santo Wines · Tastings from about 20 euro, the terrace is booked at sunset, and quiet at eleven
- Wine Museum · Around 12 euro with tasting, and it is in Episkopi Gonia
- Estate Argyros · Tastings by appointment, and the oldest vines here predate phylloxera
- Domaine Sigalas · In the flat north, tastings with food, and it is the quiet alternative to Santo
- Tomato Industrial Museum · About 5 euro, at Vlychada, and an hour is enough
Museums in Santorini
There are two archaeological museums and two sites, and they split by period: everything before the eruption is at Akrotiri and in the prehistoric museum, everything after is at Ancient Thera and in the archaeological museum. A combined ticket covering Akrotiri, Ancient Thera and the prehistoric museum costs fifteen euro and is valid three days — verified October 2026.
- Akrotiri · 20 euro, or 15 combined, and it is roofed so rain is no problem
- Museum of Prehistoric Thera · 10 euro, closed Tuesday, in Fira, and the Akrotiri frescoes are all here
- Ancient Thera · 10 euro, closed Wednesday, and the road up from Kamari has 22 hairpins
- Archaeological Museum · The classical and Roman material, small, and an hour covers it
- Lost Atlantis Experience · About 12 euro, aimed at families, and it is in Fira
- Art Space · A gallery inside a cave winery at Exo Gonia, and the owner guides it himself
- Atlantis Books · Free to browse, in Oia, and the terrace has a view
- Panagia Episkopi · Free, about 1100, and the oldest standing building on the island
Nature and day trips near Santorini
The caldera is eight kilometres across and up to four hundred metres deep, and the volcano is not extinct — Nea Kameni in the middle last erupted in 1950, and a swarm of earthquakes in early 2025 emptied the island for weeks. The beaches are black, red or white depending on which layer of the eruption the cliff above them came from.
- Nea Kameni · 5 euro park entry, 30 minutes uphill on scree, and no shade at all
- Palea Kameni · Hot springs reached by swimming from the boat, and the iron stains swimwear
- Red Beach · Check whether the path is open; the boat is about 5 to 8 euro
- Vlychada · Wind-cut white ash cliffs over black sand, and there is almost nothing built on it
- Perissa and Perivolos · Black sand that burns bare feet by midday, and sandals onto the beach
- Kamari · Black pebble under the Ancient Thera cliff, and water shoes make it bearable
- Thirassia · By boat from Ammoudi or on a caldera cruise, and check the return time
- Skaros Rock · Free, 20 minutes down and 30 back, and the path is loose rock with no rail
Holy places in Santorini
Santorini has around five hundred and fifty churches for about fifteen thousand residents, and most of them are private — built by a family as a vow, maintained by their descendants, and opened once a year on the saint’s day. That is why so many are locked, and why the blue domes are a family decision rather than a town one. There is also a Catholic community here, left from four centuries of Venetian rule.
- Three Bells of Fira · Free from outside, in Firostefani, and it is a working convent
- Catholic Cathedral · Free, in the Catholic quarter of Fira, and shoulders covered
- Orthodox Cathedral · Free, rebuilt after 1956, and the frescoes inside are modern
- Panagia Episkopi · Free, at Mesa Gonia, and the frescoes are 12th century
- Profitis Ilias Monastery · Free, 567 metres up, and it may be shut when you arrive
- Pyrgos churches · Free, about 40 churches in one village, and Good Friday is lit by thousands of cans
- Emporio kasteli · Free, a medieval walled core with no signs, and the lanes are deliberately confusing
- Agios Minas · Free from outside, the white church on the Fira cliff edge, and it is on every poster
Things to do in Santorini with kids
- Cable car · 10 euro adult and 5 for a child, three minutes, and the queue can be long
- Volcano boat trip · From about 40 euro, 5 euro park entry on top, and the climb is hot
- Monolithos · Shallow, calm, no cliffs above it, and a playground behind the sand
- Akrotiri · 20 euro, entirely roofed and shaded, and walkways run over the streets
- Lost Atlantis Experience · About 12 euro, a film and a working model, and it is indoors
- Tomato Museum · About 5 euro, the machines are still in place, and it is small
- Vlychada · The cliffs look carved and children climb the lower ones, and shade is scarce
- Ammoudi steps · 300 steps down and the same up, donkeys have right of way, and water is essential
Nightlife in Santorini
The island’s evening splits by geography. The caldera rim — Fira, Firostefani, Oia — is where the sunset crowd is and where the prices are, and most of it is over by midnight. The south coast at Perivolos is the beach-club side and runs much later. And between May and October the island takes in roughly two million visitors against fifteen thousand residents, which is worth knowing before booking anything at sunset.
- Oia Castle · Free, fills 90 minutes before, and getting out afterwards takes an hour
- Fira rim bars · Cocktails from about 15 euro on the caldera edge, and the view is the price
- Perivolos · Beach clubs on black sand, day beds from about 30 euro, and it runs latest
- Imerovigli · The same sunset as Oia with a fraction of the crowd, and it is 20 minutes away
- Akrotiri Lighthouse · Free, a car is needed, and there is one taverna nearby
- Santo Wines terrace · Tastings from about 20 euro, booked out at sunset, and reserve days ahead
- Kamari · A promenade of tavernas and bars, cheaper than the rim, and there is an open-air cinema
- Ammoudi · Sunset from sea level with fish tavernas, and the climb back is 300 steps
Frequently asked questions about Santorini
What is there to see in Santorini?
The top sights in Santorini are Fira, Oia and Imerovigli. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Santorini?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Santorini without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Santorini?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Santorini, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The rim walk.
How do you get to Santorini and get around?
The main ways are Santorini Airport, Athinios Port and Fira bus station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Santorini, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Santorini that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Santorini for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.