Santorini Greece Visitor Information

Santorini is an island rather than a building, so there is no single ticket and no single gate. What there is instead is a short list of fares that catch almost everybody out, and one climb that decides your morning. The Santorini day tours collected here all assume you have solved it.

What everything on the island costs

This is the whole list. Nothing here is included in a tour fare unless a card says so, and the two figures people are most often wrong about are the first two.

Which of the three arrival points you land at

Where you arrive decides your first hour, and the three points are nowhere near each other. Ferries dock at Athinios, on the south-west shore, which is a road port with a switchback climb out of it and buses meeting the boats. Flights land at Monolithos, on the flat eastern side, about fifteen minutes from Fira. Cruise ships anchor in the caldera itself and tender passengers to the Old Port below Fira, which has no road at all.

That last one is the important one. If your ship tenders you ashore, you are at the bottom of a 220-metre cliff with three ways up and a departure time. Our map page sets out where each tour in this list actually meets, and which arrival point it assumes.

Getting up the cliff from the Old Port

The cable car covers the climb in three minutes and is rated by the operator at 1,200 people an hour in both directions. It was given to the island in 1979 by the shipowner Evangelos Nomikos, who paid for the purchase and installation outright, and it now belongs to the island's fourteen communities. A percentage of every ticket goes to the mule drivers, by the foundation's own constitution.

A one-way adult ticket is EUR 10, a child ticket EUR 5, and each piece of luggage another EUR 5. Those are the 2025 fares; between 2017 and 2024 the adult fare was EUR 6, which is why a great deal of the internet still says six. The footpath beside it is about 590 steps, shared with the mules. We do not recommend the mules, and no tour here sells them.

The queue is the problem, not the ride. A single large ship can put three thousand people ashore in a morning against a lift that carries 1,200 an hour, and the crush is worst in the last hour before all-aboard. Two of the Santorini Greece shore excursions here get round it by boat, and one includes the fare in its price.

Getting around once you are up

Buses run out of Fira to almost everywhere, which sounds better than it is: almost every route goes through Fira, so a trip from Oia to Perissa means changing in the middle. Taxis are few and disappear at sunset. Hiring a car solves it and creates a parking problem in Oia and Fira that is genuinely difficult in August.

That is why the Santorini Greece private tours here sell the way they do. A driver-guide for three hours costs less than a day’s hire plus the afternoon you spend looking for a space.

Opening hours worth checking before you plan a morning

Four ticketed sites, four different closed days. The Akrotiri excavation runs 08:00 to 20:00 on most days and 08:30 to 15:30 on Mondays and Thursdays, with last admission twenty minutes before closing. Ancient Thera closes on Wednesdays, the Museum of Prehistoric Thera on Tuesdays, and the collection of icons at Pyrgos on Tuesdays, opening at 11:00 on Thursdays.

The excavation is the one to build a day around, and our Akrotiri page sets out what is actually under the roof. It is also the only major sight on the island that works in rain or in the middle of a July afternoon, because it is covered.

Accessibility, honestly

This is a hard island for anyone with limited mobility, and the listings say so themselves. Of the tours listed here, exactly one states that it is wheelchair accessible and the rest state that they are not. Several add that mobility scooters, non-folding wheelchairs and walkers cannot be carried on a shared tour.

Several do carry a stroller and offer infant seats, and the private vehicles are the flexible option because the route bends round you. The excavation at Akrotiri is level and roofed; the villages are cobbled, stepped and steep.

When to book, and how far ahead

Between June and September, book the boats a week out and the sunset departures sooner. In April, May and October three to five days is usually enough. Every tour listed here refunds in full up to 24 hours before it starts, so booking early costs you nothing but a decision.

If the wind is a worry, and in July it should be, put the boat day early in your stay. Our weather page has thirty years of daily records behind it and sets out how often the meltemi actually blows.

Where these figures come from

• Cable car fares and timetable: the operator's own price list and timetable, Santorini Cable Car, read 5 September 2026.
• Museum and excavation admissions and hours: the published summer-season schedule for the island's museums and archaeological sites, read 5 September 2026.
• Nea Kameni park fee: named in the exclusions of the volcano boat trip listed here.
• Sunset times: computed for Oia with the standard solar-position algorithm, in Greek local time.

Fares and opening hours change, and the cable car operator says so on its own price list. Check before you travel.

Everything above sits behind the trips on the Santorini Greece Tours home page, where the fares and the inclusions are laid out side by side.