Key Highlights of Santorini Greece

Eleven places worth the detour, each with what is actually there, how long it takes and when it is quiet. The island is small enough that a good day links four or five of them, and short enough on parking that Santorini day tours exist mostly to solve that.

Oia, and the sunset everybody comes for

Oia sits on the northern tip of the rim, and it is the postcard: white cubes stacked down a cliff, blue domes, and the ruins of the Venetian fort of Londsa at the far end. It is also, between six and eight in the evening in August, one of the most crowded half-kilometres in Greece. Allow an hour and a half to walk it properly, and go in the morning if you can.

Almost every land tour in this list stops here, and the ones that stop longest give you between one and two hours. That is the right amount: long enough to reach the fort and back, short enough that the crowd has not yet formed.

Fira, 220 metres above its own harbour

The capital hangs on the rim directly above the Old Port, and the vertical distance between the two is 220 metres. That single fact shapes the whole cruise day on this island: there is no road down, so the cable car, the footpath and the mules are the only ways between a ship's tender and the town.

Fira itself carries the Museum of Prehistoric Thera and the Archaeological Museum of Thera, both EUR 10, both closed one day a week. It is also where the bus network converges, which means almost any journey between two villages passes through it.

Firostefani and Imerovigli, the rim without the crush

Walk north out of Fira and the crowd thins within ten minutes. Firostefani and then Imerovigli sit on the same cliff, look at the same caldera and the same sunset, and have a fraction of the people. Imerovigli is the highest point of the inhabited rim.

The caldera footpath runs from Fira through both and on to Oia. It is about three hours of walking, free, unshaded and exposed for the last stretch, and it is the best thing on the island that costs nothing.

Pyrgos and its kasteli

Pyrgos is a medieval hill village with a Venetian kasteli at the top of it, and the alleys wind up to it in circles rather than lines. From the walls you can see both coasts at once, which no other village manages. The collection of icons and ecclesiastical artefacts here costs EUR 5 and closes on Tuesdays.

Four of the land tours in this list stop here, usually for thirty to forty minutes. It also sits directly below the monastery on the island's highest ground, so the two are almost always visited together.

Megalochori, the village that stayed

Megalochori is the one people are surprised by. It is a working village of cave houses, bell towers and vineyard walls in the middle of the island, with no caldera view and almost no coaches, and several operators stop here for half an hour precisely because of that.

It is also where the farm cooking class runs, and it sits in the middle of the vineyard country the Santorini Greece wine tours work through.

Emporio and its second kasteli

Emporio has the larger of the island's two Venetian fortified quarters, a warren of vaulted lanes built inward for defence, with windmills on the ridge above. It is the least visited of the villages that has something to see, and a full-day tour is usually the only way it appears on an itinerary.

Profitis Ilias, the top of the island

The monastery on the island's highest ground gives the one view that takes in the whole of Santorini at once: the caldera on one side, the flat eastern farmland and the black beaches on the other. Tours stop for around twenty minutes, which is about right unless the monastery museum is open.

The Red Beach, and why it is red

The cliff behind it is oxidised iron in the volcanic rock, and the sand below has broken off it. It sits near the Akrotiri headland at the southern end, reached by a short path from a car park, and it is small, sheltered and busy.

Most land tours give it fifteen to twenty minutes, which is a photograph rather than a swim. If you want to swim, go to the black beaches instead.

Perissa and Perivolos, the long black beaches

The southeast coast is one continuous strip of black volcanic sand running for kilometres under Mesa Vouno. Perissa is at the northern end under the mountain, Perivolos runs south from it, and both have the sunbeds, tavernas and water sports the caldera side does not.

The sand gets genuinely hot in August, which is worth knowing before you walk across it barefoot. Tours give it between half an hour and two hours depending on the day.

Vlychada, the moonscape

Vlychada is the strangest coast on the island: wind-carved white pumice cliffs, sculpted into shapes, standing over dark sand. The marina here is where the catamarans board, and the riding stable that takes you along the sand is a few minutes away.

Thirasia, the piece that broke off

Thirasia is the other inhabited island in the caldera, the western fragment left when the rim collapsed, and it has a few hundred residents, a handful of tavernas and no crowd at all. Two of the boat trips here stop for between half an hour and two hours.

The viewpoints, compared

What you actually do at each of them is the subject of the things-to-do page, and the practical fares are on the visitor information page. To see which trip covers which, start at the Santorini Greece Tours home page.