Santorini Travel guide

The island is almost dry and there are only very few springs on it. The Santorinians, in order to cover their daily needs, use rainwater, which is collected in special cisterns during the winter. Every house has its own cistern. In order to clean the water they used to have leeches (vdeles) in the cisterns, which absorbed viruses. Today they use chemicals. Furthermore, the island is supplied, especially during summer time, by water-carrying ships.
Some years ago Santorini was a rather poor island. The earthquakes were a catastrophe for the economy. Even food was a problem. The island's main product was the famous little tomato of Santorini. As there was no money for buying meet, the Santorinians cooked, instead of meat balls, tomato balls. You can get the " know-how" for making "tomato balls" in our gourmet.
In Oia, the picturesque traditional town on the northwest side of Santorini, an old mansion has been restored and converted into a museum that houses the Maritime History of Thera.

The mythical Atlantis

The legend of Atlantis has been presented to us by Plato and seems to be half history half imagination. Very often the destruction of Thera is identified with the sinking of mythical Atlantis.

The real fact of the submergence of Santorini or other Islands in Aegean Sea during an eruption of the volcano, together with the imagination or wish for a Perfect City may explain the legend.

The legend, which Plato presented in his dialogues Timaios and Kritias, is a story, which was told to Kritias by his great-grandfather, who had heard it from his father, Dropidas and he from the sagacious legislator Solon. According to the story Atlantis was an extensive insular continent whose inhabitants had developed an exceptionally high standard of civilization. The unique power of the kings of Atlantis was not only confined to their own continent but extended to the surrounding islands and controlled part of Libya, as far as Egypt, as well as part of Europe up to Tyrrhenia (Northern Italy).

Since the days of Plato to the present day many attempts have been made to interpret the myth or even to rediscover Atlantis. Thousands of studies and articles have been written on this subject. The fact is that Plato, through the myth, presented to his fellow-citizens a paradigm of an ideally organized state which flowered and prospered for as long as men respected and enforced the laws and worshipped the gods who had given them the legislation. However, when the men became arrogant and ceased to obey the laws of their state the wrath of the gods was such that they were condemned to annihilation.

Nevertheless, Atlantis can be more than true, at least within our imagination. It is believed that Atlantis was very close to Santorini

The volcano first manifested itself about 80.000 years or so ago. This first eruption was terrific. Apart from the ash, the crater expelled other, heavier substances, which covered the surface of the sea and joined with the exciting islets to form an approximately circular island with a diameter of 14 to 15 kilometres.

About 3.000 B.C the island was inhabited by people who called it Strongyle (that means "round").
The volcano erupted for a second time, equally destructively , at 1450 B.C wiping out all the life on the Island and sanking the greater part of Strongyle beneath the waves.
All that was left above the surface of the sea were segments of its perimeter which today are called Santorini , Thirasia , and Aspronisi.

One of the greatest and most cosmopolitan harbours of the Mediterranean during the first half of the second millennium, Akrotiri was berried under a thick mantle of ash when the volcano erupted in about 1.600 BC.

The island was inhabited at around 3200 B.C. when Cretes showed up.

The influence of the Minoan culture on the island was obvious when excavations started on Akrotiri and found a whole village with houses decorated with wall paintings similar to those found in the Minoan palace in Crete.

Before the volcano started its destructive work the island was called Stroggili, from its shape.

But in 1500 B.C. happened something that completely changed the story of the ancient world.

It was the explosion of the volcano which was in the centre of the island and the greater part sunk.

The tidal wave which was caused by the explosion , estimated at around 100m high, destroyed the palace of Knossos and did a lot of damage at the north coast of Crete.