Oia Santorini is the most photographed village in Greece and the one visitors most often describe as both extraordinary and disappointing in the same sentence. Both are correct, and the difference between them is entirely a matter of what time…
Fira Santorini is the island’s capital, its transport hub and the place most first-time visitors should base themselves, and it is also the town people are most often rude about. Both reactions are earned. Between eleven and five in high…
Red Beach Santorini is the island’s most photographed stretch of coast and the one that most often disappoints people who arrive without knowing what they are walking into. It is a small bay of dark red and black pebble beneath…
Thirassia Santorini is the island you have been looking at all week without knowing its name. It is the long dark shape across the water from Oia and Imerovigli, the western wall of the same volcano, separated from the main…
Santorini museums are small, cheap and almost entirely overlooked, which is a shame because two of them hold objects that would headline a national collection anywhere else. The frescoes lifted from Akrotiri are among the finest surviving wall paintings of…
Santorini villas divide into two very different products that share a word. On the caldera rim, a villa usually means a cave suite cut into the cliff with a terrace and a plunge pool, sleeping two to four, priced accordingly.…
Santorini in winter is a genuinely different island, and whether that is wonderful or disappointing depends almost entirely on what you came for. The caldera is still there, the villages are still white against the cliff, and the light in…
Deciding where to stay in Santorini matters more here than on almost any other Greek island, because the place is really two islands joined by a ridge. On one side a cliff of villages above a flooded volcano, expensive and…
The single most useful fact about the Santorini taxi system is how small it is. The island has a famously limited fleet, licensed in numbers that made sense decades ago and never expanded to match the visitor numbers, which means…
The Santorini bus network is cheap, useful and much more limited than visitors expect, and understanding both halves of that sentence is the difference between a holiday that works without a car and one that quietly misses half the island.…