Location

Santorini (officially Thira) is an island in the Aegean Sea, southeast of Greece's mainland. What the visitor sees today is essentially what remains after the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, some 3600 years ago, which left a large caldera, i.e. a lagoon, and gave the island its peculiar shape. This eruption, according to one theory, may have had an indirect impact on the collapse of the Minion civilization in Crete through an enormous tsunami.

A more romantic theory - still a topic of dispute among archeologists, historians, seismologists, etc. - has given birth to the legend of Atlantis, Plato's ideal state. Speaking of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization, excavations at Akrotiri, a location in the southern part of the island have revealed findings that make Santorini the best-known Minoan site outside of Crete, homeland of this culture. These amazing findings (frescoes, remnants of buildings, fine pottery, etc.) were all preserved buried under the solidified ashes of the gigantic eruption of the volcano.