Santorini Day Trip from Athens

Santorini day trip from Athens journeys link the Greek capital with Santorini, far out in the southern Aegean. They take place on an island of cliff-top villages, volcanic islets and long pebble beaches. The sections below look at Imerovigli, Skaros, the Three Bells of Fira and the cable car. Kamari, Perissa and the white islet of Aspronisi follow, then local produce, geology, history and short answers. Wider plans appear under Greece island hopping tours and in the 10 day Greece itinerary. More trips across the country sit on the Greece tours page.

Bookings made through the GetYourGuide widgets on this page earn Classical Greece Tours a commission, at no extra cost to the traveller.

What is a Santorini day trip from Athens?

A Santorini day trip from Athens has one goal: Santorini. This Greek island rises from the southern waters of the Aegean Sea. Its official name is Thira or Thera. It sits roughly 200 km to the southeast of mainland Greece.

A Santorini day trip from Athens takes place on the biggest island in a small, ring-shaped archipelago. An archipelago means a chain or cluster of islands set close together. Within the Cyclades, a group of Greek islands, no member lies further south than Santorini. Santorini covers about 73 square kilometres. In 2021, a census recorded 15,480 residents.

A Santorini day trip from Athens heads for the island ancient writers called Kalliste. That name means the fairest one. A modern tradition adds Strongyle, meaning the circular one. The first known mention of the name Santorini came from Muhammad al-Idrisi, a geographer, around 1154. The island has carried that name since at least the mid-twelfth century.

Tourism is the main industry of Santorini, especially in the summer months. A Santorini day trip from Athens shares the island with an estimated 2 million tourists each year. An estimate is a careful guess based on the figures to hand. Tourism means travel for leisure, and the people who make such trips are tourists.

• Airport: Among the Cyclades, only a small group of islands has a major airport, and Santorini is one.
• Houses: Traditional houses are low-lying and cubical, built of local stone like those across the Cyclades.
• Dug-out rooms: Hypóskapha are house extensions cut sideways or down into the pumice around them.

Before 1960, the economic life of Santorini rested on crops and trade. That was the year foreign visitors slowly began arriving for tourism. Crops are plants raised in fields for food or sale. Pumice is a light volcanic rock full of tiny air pockets.

Why does a Santorini day trip from Athens bring up Imerovigli?

A Santorini day trip from Athens arrives on an island that holds Imerovigli. The village stands on the caldera rim, to the north of Fira, the main town. A caldera is a vast hollow left by a collapsed volcano.

On a Santorini day trip from Athens, every Imerovigli church follows the Cycladic architectural style. Cycladic means typical of the Cyclades, where Santorini belongs. At the heart of the village stands the church of Ai-Stratis. Ai is a short local form of Agios, the Greek word for saint.

Remains of a Venetian castle stand on Skaros Rock, close to the village. The word Venetian points to Venice, once a sea power in Italy. Within a Santorini day trip from Athens, Imerovigli serves as the gateway village to Skaros. That rock is a promontory, meaning a tall point of land that pushes into the sea.

In the eighteenth century, eruptions drove the majority of Skaros residents to Fira or Imerovigli. An eruption is a burst of lava, ash and gas from a volcano. Today, the ruins of Skaros are a popular goal for hiking and photography. Hiking means walking for pleasure along paths in open country.

• Paths: A network of narrow, paved paths crosses the village of Imerovigli.
• Monastery: The Monastery of Saint Nikolaos lies on the path linking Imerovigli to Fira.
• Local unit: The Thera municipality has 12 local subdivisions, and Imerovigli counts among them.

Imerovigli also has its own residents, apart from those who come on a Santorini day trip from Athens. The village had 469 permanent inhabitants in 2021. Permanent inhabitants are people who live in a place all year round. Visitors, by contrast, stay for a short time.

For a Santorini day trip from Athens, which story belongs to Skaros?

A Santorini day trip from Athens comes to an island with Skaros, a rock crowned by ruins. At sea, sailors call the same formation Cape Skaros. In sailing terms, a cape means a headland pushing out into the open water.

A Santorini day trip from Athens heads to an island where volcanic activity created Skaros. Since then, erosion and earthquakes have kept reshaping the rock beside the caldera. Erosion means slow wear by wind and water. The Byzantine Empire first fortified the site in the early 13th century. That empire was the eastern Roman state.

For a Santorini day trip from Athens, the fortress story starts with Giacomo Barozzi, a Venetian architect. The Byzantines hired him to build a fortress around the promontory. A fortress means a heavily walled stronghold built for defence. The first structure, known as La Roka, was finished in 1207. Its name means Upper Castle in Greek.

By 1336, the settlement held over 200 homes and hundreds of inhabitants. Venice took over Santorini in that same year. Skaros was then the largest settlement on the island. Its fortress became the capital of Venetian Santorini in practice, though not by formal title. Venetian here means ruled by the Republic of Venice.

• Defence: High on the western cliffs, the fortifications shielded the town from raiders.
• Collapse: Earthquakes from an eruption that began in 1650 sent part of the town into the sea.
• Ruins: By the early 19th century, only a handful of weathered ruins of the fortress remained.

On a Santorini day trip from Athens, Skaros still holds a working monastery below the rock. It is the Chapel of Panagia Theoskepasti, set on the cliffs. Panagia is a Greek title of the Virgin Mary, meaning All-Holy. Theoskepasti means veiled by God.

Why do the Three Bells of Fira matter to a Santorini day trip from Athens, as a church and landmark?

A Santorini day trip from Athens lands on an island with the Three Bells of Fira. Its formal name is the Catholic Church of the Dormition, meaning the falling asleep of Mary. It is an Eastern Catholic church in the town of Fira.

Eastern Catholic means the church keeps Byzantine forms of worship while in union with Rome. The church is famous for a blue dome, three bells and its views. For a Santorini day trip from Athens, the church sits right over the cliffs dominating western Santorini. A dome is a rounded roof shaped like half a ball.

Two small cave churches were dug into the cliff face here in the middle of the 17th century. A cave church is a chapel carved into solid rock. As Fira grew, the cliff receded, or drew back, and destroyed them. An infirmary, a place to care for the sick, was then built there.

Jesuits later occupied the infirmary building. Jesuits belong to a Catholic religious order called the Society of Jesus. A Santorini day trip from Athens heads toward an island with its own Catholic diocese. A diocese means the area a bishop oversees. The Jesuits stayed until the land passed to the Diocese of Santorini.

• Changes: Over the centuries, the church was refurbished and expanded again and again.
• Earthquake: Heavy damage came with the 1956 Amorgos earthquake, and the building was restored afterwards.
• Feast day: The church marks its feast day, its yearly holy day, on 15 August.

The current church dates from 1757, when builders raised it on this cliff-top site. A Santorini day trip from Athens aims at the island that holds it. A cliff-top site is a place on the upper edge of a cliff.

In a Santorini day trip from Athens, what role does the Santorini Cable Car play?

A Santorini day trip from Athens crosses to an island with a cliff lift, the Santorini Cable Car. Locally, people call it the Teleferico. It is a pulsed gondola lift between the Old Port of Gialos and Fira, the capital.

In a pulsed gondola lift, small cabins hang from a cable and move in grouped bunches. It is a vital transport link for cruise passengers and locals. A Santorini day trip from Athens sets out for an island where the lift replaced a hard climb. That climb meant about 600 steep steps, or else a mule ride.

Shipowner Evangelos Nomikos began the donation that paid for the cable car in 1979. A shipowner owns merchant vessels, and a donation is a freely given gift. Work on the lift began in 1980 and ended in 1982. The Old Port at the base is also known as Scala Pier.

The Municipality of Thera owns the cable car. A municipality is a district that elects its own local council. Part of the income goes to the traditional mule drivers. Mule drivers lead the animals up the steps. For a Santorini day trip from Athens, this income also keeps the old tradition of mule transport alive.

• Cabins: Six passengers fit in each gondola, three in each of its two rows.
• Height: From the port to the top, the cabins rise about 220 metres.
• Access: The lift is designed for passengers with mobility challenges, wheelchair users among them.

A Santorini day trip from Athens ends on an island whose cable car tops out in Fira. That upper station stands near the Archaeological Museum. Archaeological museums display things that people of the distant past made and used.

Where does Kamari lie relative to a Santorini day trip from Athens, and what marks it?

A Santorini day trip from Athens travels to an island whose south-eastern coast holds Kamari, a coastal village. Fira, the island capital, is about 8 km away. A coastal village is one built right beside the sea.

On a Santorini day trip from Athens, Kamari is the village that residents of nearby Episkopi Gonias built. They moved down to the coast to build it. A strong earthquake in July 1956 had almost flattened their old village. In earlier times, Kamari lived from farming and fishing. Farming here means growing crops and raising animals for food.

A small arch at the southern tip of the beach gave Kamari its name. Kamara is the Greek word for arch. That arch is the last piece of an old customs house, raised between 1537 and 1650. Customs officials checked goods and collected trade taxes in such a building.

For a Santorini day trip from Athens, Kamari’s black-pebble beach stretches further than any other on the island. A pebble is a small, smooth, rounded stone. The beach runs from Monolithos in the north-east to the foot of the Mesa Vouno mountain. A mountain foot is the lowest part of its slope.

• Epiphany: Each year, the arch hosts the Blessing of the Water, a local custom of the Epiphany feast.
• Peak: Mesa Vouno rises to about 400 m, making it the second highest peak on Santorini.
• Sanctuary: In 2002, an archaic, or very old, sanctuary of Achilles was found in Kamari.

Each year, an open-air cinema in Kamari hosts the Santorini Film Festival. Open-air means set outdoors, under the sky. A Santorini day trip from Athens is aimed at the island where this festival takes place. A festival is a set of events held together.

How is the name in a Santorini day trip from Athens linked to Perissa?

A Santorini day trip from Athens carries a name that began at Perissa. This village lies 13 km southeast of Fira. Remnants survive there of an Early Christian church devoted to Saint Irene. Contracted, her name became Santorini, the present name of the island.

Contracted here means shortened by running sounds together. Early Christian refers to the first centuries of Christianity. On a Santorini day trip from Athens, Saint Irene ranks as patron saint of the island. A patron saint is a saint believed to protect a place or group. Orthodox Christians know her as Irene of Macedonia, a Great Martyr.

Accounts place her life in the first or second century. A martyr is a person put to death for keeping a faith. Her early life is wrapped in legend, and little about it is certain. A legend is an old story handed down that cannot be proved true.

For a Santorini day trip from Athens, Perissa falls within the Emporio community. The word community here names a small local unit within the municipality. It groups four villages: Emporeio, Perissa, Agios Georgios and Exomytis. Together they had 3,704 permanent inhabitants in 2021. Perissa itself counted 725 permanent inhabitants at the 2021 census.

• Beaches: Perissa has beaches on the Aegean, and Perissa Beach is one of them.
• Worship: Irene is honoured above all in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church.
• Italy link: Irene was patron saint of the Italian city of Lecce until 1656.

Perissa stands close to the rock called Messa Vouno. A Santorini day trip from Athens sets off for the island that holds both. A rock here means a large natural mass of stone. Messa Vouno is also spelled Mesa Vouno.

Why does Aspronisi belong to the setting of a Santorini day trip from Athens, and how did it form?

A Santorini day trip from Athens goes to an island whose caldera holds Aspronisi, an uninhabited islet. In Greek, Aspronisi means White Island. Islet is the word for a tiny island. Part of it is made of white pumice, which gives the name.

Aspronisi was briefly a submarine volcano, which means a volcano under the sea. The force of an eruption then pushed the islet above the surface. Afterwards, the volcano buried it under thick pumice and tephra. Tephra is the rock fragments a volcano throws into the air. These deposits later hardened into pale white rock.

On a Santorini day trip from Athens, Aspronisi sits on a base of black lava rock. Lava is melted rock that pours from a volcano and then cools. The submerged outer edge of the caldera links the islet to Therasia and Santorini. Submerged means lying under the water, out of sight.

The island covers 0.14 square kilometres. It measures 650 metres long by 200 metres wide. Its summit forms a flat plateau, a raised area of level ground. For a Santorini day trip from Athens, the islet has two pebbly beaches and a small anchorage. An anchorage is a place where boats can drop anchor.

• Build-up: After the first eruption, later volcanic activity built the islet up step by step.
• Plants: Only sparse plant life grows on the rocky island today.
• Birds: Aspronisi serves as a nesting ground for certain kinds of migratory birds.

Steep cliffs dominate the shores of this small islet. Migratory birds are birds that move between distant regions with the seasons each year. A Santorini day trip from Athens makes for an island group that includes this white islet.

Before a Santorini day trip from Athens, which facts define the Santorini tomato?

A Santorini day trip from Athens is an outing to the home island of the Santorini tomato. Its Greek name is tomataki Santorinis. This fruit is a variety of cherry tomato, which is a small, round kind of tomato.

The fruit is deep red, and its firm flesh is not especially moist. Flesh is the soft inner part of a fruit. The seed content inside each tomato is high. Grown on the island of a Santorini day trip from Athens, each fruit is round and slightly flattened. It weighs 15 to 27 grams.

Soil at the far end of a Santorini day trip from Athens holds no natural nitrogen. Nitrogen is a nutrient that plants need to grow. Fertiliser, plant food that makes up for it, is rarely added. The ground does contain sodium, a metal found in salt. Sodium pulls moisture out of the air and traps it.

Limey, alkaline soil and water stress shaped the tomato of a Santorini day trip from Athens. Limey soil holds chalky lime, and alkaline soil is low in acid. Water stress means that plants receive too little water. Together they largely account for its selective breeding. Selective breeding means keeping seed from the plants that cope best.

• Taste: High carbohydrate content, meaning sugars and starches, gives a sweet yet strongly acidic, or sharp, taste.
• Farming start: Growers on the island began to raise this tomato variety on a regular basis in 1875.
• Decline: Environmental, political and tourism problems have cut tomato production on the island.

Greece is widely believed to owe its first cherry tomatoes to an abbot in Ano Syros. Ano Syros lies in the Cyclades islands. An abbot heads a monastery, here a house of Capuchin friars. The year given for that arrival is 1818.

What makes fava santorinis part of the story of a Santorini day trip from Athens?

The Santorini day trip from Athens points to the island that names fava santorinis, a Greek dish. Cooks prepare that dish with Lathyrus clymenum seeds. That plant name is Latin, the old language that scientists use for naming plants.

Lathyrus clymenum also goes by the English name Spanish vetchling. It is a flowering plant in the Fabaceae, the pea and bean family. It is native to the Mediterranean, meaning it grows there naturally. Its seeds look like toor dal or chana dal from India. Yet the plant belongs to a completely different species, or kind.

Greek cuisine also knows a wider fava, a traditional dish of split peas, commonly yellow ones. Split peas are dried peas cut in half. Despite the name, this fava contains no fava beans. Cooks boil the peas with chopped onion. They then mash them into a thick, smooth paste with garlic, lemon juice and oil.

For growers on the home soil of a Santorini day trip from Athens, vetchling is a vulnerable crop. Vulnerable means easily harmed. Strong winds can strip off its flowers before they yield the pea, its seed. Drought, a long spell without rain, can ruin it too. So can a sudden heat wave, almost instantly.

• Low fat: Seeds behind the fava of a Santorini day trip from Athens contain very little fat.
• Serving: Greek fava is eaten warm or cold and serves as a dip, like hummus, a chickpea spread.
• Origins: Fava began in Byzantine cuisine, the food of a medieval Greek-speaking empire, and was widely served in taverns.

Pulses are peas, beans and lentils, harvested and eaten as dried seeds. In Greece, home of every Santorini day trip from Athens, pulse farming began in 6,000 BCE. Historical evidence supports that date. BCE means before the common era.

For a Santorini day trip from Athens, what volcanic past does Palea Kameni hold?

A Santorini day trip from Athens centres on an island whose caldera holds Palea Kameni. Another spelling is Palia Kameni. It is a volcanic island in its own right. A caldera is a huge hollow left when a volcano collapses after an eruption.

One eruption after another built this island in the sea of a Santorini day trip from Athens. Pumice and dacite lava piled up in large deposits, or layers, from those eruptions. Pumice is a stone so packed with air pockets that it is light. Dacite is a volcanic rock rich in silica.

Ancient authors say the island was called Hiera. That name was commonly given to volcanic mountains in antiquity, or ancient times. Records show no further activity on the island until 726. That year, an explosive eruption under the sea threw out pumice and lava. Explosive means bursting out suddenly with great force.

Black lava forms craters on two small islands, Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni. Lava is melted rock that later cools into stone. A crater is the bowl-shaped mouth of a volcano. Of the pair, Palea Kameni lies to the southwest. Both islands lie within the waters of a Santorini day trip from Athens.

• Buildings: A small church stands among the structures on this island, where almost nobody lives.
• Residents: Goats roam the island as a herd, alongside just one human inhabitant.
• Warm water: The island also holds a hot spring, a natural flow of heated water from underground.

Volcanoes created a whole group of islands in the area of a Santorini day trip from Athens. The group spans Thera, Thirasia, Aspronisi, Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni. This cluster forms an archipelago, the word for a chain or group of islands.

What do the wall paintings of Thera tell a Santorini day trip from Athens about the past?

A Santorini day trip from Athens unfolds on the home island of the wall paintings of Thera. Spyridon Marinatos found these frescoes, pictures painted onto wet plaster. He uncovered them at the excavations of Akrotiri. Excavations are planned digs that bring buried remains to light.

Experts class the paintings as Minoan art. Minoan art is the art of an early civilisation of the Aegean Sea. Theran culture still differed somewhat from Minoan culture. The paintings first decorated the walls of ancient Theran houses. Theran means of Thera, a second name for the island that a Santorini day trip from Athens reaches.

Excavators brought the paintings out of the ground between 1967 and 1974. An excavator here is a person who digs up remains of the past. The frescoes present the early Aegean world as an advanced, highly developed society. The Aegean is the sea that surrounds the goal of every Santorini day trip from Athens.

Painters prepared the stone walls before any colour went on. First came a coat of mud mixed with straw. Next came a thin layer of lime plaster, a paste that sets hard. Last of all, the painters added layers of fine plaster. Paint laid on wet plaster joins with it as it dries.

• Yellow: Theran artists painted lions’ golden fur and the skin of youths in yellow.
• Blue: Blue served as a dark grey for birds, furry animal skins, fish scales and shaven young heads.
• White and red: White showed the pale skin of women, while red showed the sun-tanned skin of men.

Chemists, botanists, zoologists, art historians and archaeologists all study the paintings. Zoologists study animals, and botanists study plants. Chemists test what paints and other substances contain. Art historians trace art across time, including the frescoes tied to a Santorini day trip from Athens.

For anyone on a Santorini day trip from Athens, what was the 1956 Amorgos earthquake?

A Santorini day trip from Athens concerns an island struck by the 1956 Amorgos earthquake. Earthquakes happen when rock deep underground slips and the ground shakes. The shaking caused significant damage there and on the neighbouring island of Amorgos.

The Cyclades island group lies in a zone of extensional, or stretching, tectonics within the Aegean Sea plate. Tectonics is the movement of rock plates, like the one beneath a Santorini day trip from Athens. The Hellenic arc bulging out causes this stretching. Behind that bulge lies flat-slab subduction, the African plate sinking at a shallow angle.

The quake’s focal mechanism, the pattern of movement at its source, fits normal faulting. In normal faulting, one block of rock slides down past another. The fault trended from southwest to northeast. Aftershocks, the smaller quakes that follow, show the fault plane dipping southeast at about 25°. A fault plane is the surface where rock breaks.

The rupture area, where the rock tore apart, stretched about 110 km along the fault. Its depth reached 26 km, down into the upper mantle. The mantle is the thick layer of hot rock beneath the crust. The crust, the Earth’s outer shell, is the rock under every Santorini day trip from Athens.

• Tsunami: The tsunami, a run of giant sea waves, struck a wide stretch of the Aegean Sea.
• Cause: Underwater landslides, set off by the shaking, were the main cause of those waves.
• Houses: The earthquake knocked down 529 houses outright and left others damaged as well.

A large number of cisterns fell out of use after the 1956 earthquake. Cisterns are tanks that collect rainwater and store it for later use. These tanks are spread across the land of a Santorini day trip from Athens.

How does Battus I of Cyrene connect a Santorini day trip from Athens with Libya?

A Santorini day trip from Athens leads to Thera, the Greek island where Battus I was born. He became the founder of Cyrene, an ancient Greek colony. A colony is a new town that people from one land set up in another land.

Thera is another name for Santorini, the island of every Santorini day trip from Athens. Battus became the first king of Cyrene. He was also the first Greek king in Africa. On top of that, he founded the Battiad dynasty. A dynasty means a series of rulers who come from one family.

In about 639 BC, Grinus, the king of Thera, travelled to the oracle of Delphi. An oracle was a holy place where a priestess passed on a god’s answers. BC means before Christ, counting back from the year of his birth. The king went there to seek advice on a range of matters.

The name Battus means stammer in the ancient Greek language. A stammer is a speech problem in which a speaker repeats or catches on sounds. He had such a speech impediment as a child. Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, gives a second meaning. In the Libyan language, he says, battus means king.

• Oracle’s answer: The priestess told Grinus to found a city in Libya, as the god Apollo advised.
• Settlers: Seven villages of the island behind a Santorini day trip from Athens each sent people, drawn by lot.
• Ships: Battus and his companions set sail in two penteconters, ancient ships rowed by fifty oarsmen.

Battus gave the new settlement the name Cyrene. He founded it in about 630 BC. In a settlement, people build new homes together. Its first people were Thereans, from the island linked to a Santorini day trip from Athens.

What do travellers ask about Santorini day trip from Athens, and what are the answers?

A Santorini day trip from Athens heads out to an island once called Thera. That name came from Theras. He was a Spartan, and with fellow Spartans he colonised the island. To colonise a place is to settle it with people from elsewhere.

Before a Santorini day trip from Athens, who was Theras?

Theras was a regent of Sparta and a son of Autesion. A regent rules on behalf of a king who cannot yet rule. His nephews, Eurysthenes and Procles, had Theras as their regent. Nephews are the sons of a brother or sister. Sparta was a powerful city of ancient southern Greece.

Which museum in Fira sums up the deep past of a Santorini day trip from Athens?

The Museum of Prehistoric Thera stands in Fira, on Santorini. Prehistoric describes the ages before people kept written records. Its displays trace island history from the Late Neolithic to the Late Cycladic I period. Neolithic names the New Stone Age. Cycladic refers to the Cyclades islands. Wall painting is shown in great detail.

What volcanic arc lies beneath a Santorini day trip from Athens?

The South Aegean Volcanic Arc counts Santorini and Nisyros among its active volcanoes. Such an arc is a bow-shaped line of volcanoes. As the region stretched, the arc first moved south and took on its curved shape. Finally, the Aegean Sea plate split from Eurasia along a fresh fault zone in the north.

Close to a Santorini day trip from Athens, what are the Christiana islands?

Christiana is a cluster of three Greek islands of volcanic origin in the Cyclades. On Christiani, one of them, remains of human settlement go back to Neolithic times. Because the islands are unfarmed, artificial pesticides and fertilisers are absent there. Pesticides are chemicals that kill crop pests.

Featured photo: Rebexho, CC BY-SA 3.0, File:Imerovigli Skaros Santorini.JPG, via Wikimedia Commons.