Four days in Santorini: sleeping on the rim of a drowned volcano

A clifftop walk on the first evening, a Bronze Age town under a roof, an hour on the crater itself, and Oia only once, at the right time of day.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Santorini
Places
9 across 4 days
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Santorini is a piece of a much bigger island. Around 1600 BC the volcano at its centre erupted with a violence that ranks among the largest in recorded human history, the middle of the island collapsed into the sea, and what is left is a crescent of cliff standing up to three hundred metres above a flooded crater. Everything people come here for follows from that one afternoon.

It is also small and extremely busy. The island is under twenty kilometres end to end, cruise ships put thousands of people into Fira for the day, and by six in the evening the main street of Oia holds a slow-moving crowd all walking in the same direction. None of that ruins the place; it just means the good hours are early, late, and anywhere other than where the coaches have parked.

Three nights gives you the caldera villages, the volcano, the buried Bronze Age town in the south and a proper afternoon on a black beach. Base yourself on the rim, in Fira or Imerovigli, and let the bus do the rest.

Highlights

  • The clifftop path from Fira out to Skaros Rock, which faces the same sunset as Oia and holds a fraction of the people
  • A three storey town buried by the eruption and dug out again, walked at ground level under a roof
  • An hour on the crater floor of an active volcano, ten minutes by boat from the old port
  • Black sand under wind-carved cliffs at Vlychada, the least developed of the island's good beaches

Where to stay

Santorini, three nights

The rim villages are built out of the cliff rather than on it, in cave rooms cut back into the pumice, which is why the interiors are cool in August and why so many hotels are stacked in terraces down the drop. Walking between them is mostly stairs, and a suitcase on the rim is a genuinely bad idea.

The island has two completely different halves. The west is the caldera: cliffs, white villages, the view everybody photographs. The east and south are flat, agricultural and unglamorous, with the airport, the black beaches, the vineyards and most of the archaeology. Four days is enough to want both.

Day by day

Day 1 in Santorini

The rim path from Fira to Skaros Rock

Arrive, drop the bags, and walk north along the caldera path. It runs continuously from Fira through Firostefani to Imerovigli, always along the top of the drop, and it takes about forty minutes at a stroll.

At the far end a rock promontory juts out into the crater with the remains of a castle on it. It faces the same sun that Oia does, from a better angle and with a small fraction of the audience.

  1. 17:15

    Catholic Church of the Dormition (The Three Bells of Fira)

    Visit

    The blue dome and the three hanging bells fifteen minutes north of Fira town, on the path itself. The current church went up in 1757, on a site where earlier chapels were cut into the cliff before the cliff receded out from under them.

  2. 19:00

    Skaros Rock

    Historic

    The Venetians fortified this promontory in 1207 and people lived on it for six hundred years, watching the caldera for pirates. Earthquakes have taken almost all of it, but the walk out along the ridge is the best half hour on the rim. Take a torch for the way back.

  3. 21:00

    Dinner in Imerovigli

    Eat

    Eat where you have ended up rather than walking back to Fira in the dark. Imerovigli's tavernas are a few streets back from the edge and charge accordingly.

With more time: The whole coastal path continues from Imerovigli all the way to Oia, about ten kilometres in total and three to four hours with the climbs. Doing it in reverse, setting off from Oia after the heat has gone, keeps the sun behind you and finishes at your own door.

Day 2 in Santorini

Akrotiri, the red cliffs and the black sand in the south

The south of the island is where the volcano did the archaeology a favour. A whole Bronze Age town was buried under ash in the eruption and stayed sealed there until the 1960s, and it is now roofed over and open to walk through at street level.

The site closes early enough that a morning visit is the right one, and afterwards the coast below it is ten minutes away. Take the Akrotiri bus from Fira; it runs via Megalochori and the village before the site.

The afternoon is for a beach. The two nearest are very different: one dramatic, cramped and occasionally shut, the other long, black and quiet.

  1. 09:30

    Ancient Akrotiri

    Historic

    Excavations started in 1967 under Spyridon Marinatos and turned up buildings three storeys high with their staircases, drains and pots still in place. The wall paintings have gone to museums, but the town itself is here, under a canopy, with lanes you walk down rather than look at from a fence.

  2. 12:00

    Red Beach

    Nature

    Ten minutes' walk from the site, under cliffs of oxidised red rock, with sand ground out of the same material. Worth the look more than the swim: it is small, it gets packed, and the loose rock above it means the path is closed after landslides. Check before you set off down.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch at Akrotiri or Vlychada

    Eat

    The fish tavernas at the little marina at Vlychada are where the day's catch actually lands. Simpler and about half the price of anything on the rim.

  4. 15:00

    Vlychada Beach

    Visit

    Black sand backed by pale cliffs that the wind has carved into fins and hollows, on the south coast. It has none of the sunbed density of Perissa or Kamari and is the better beach for it. There is a nudist stretch at the far end.

With more time: The old tomato cannery beside the beach has been turned into an exhibition space and a small museum about the crop the island lived on before tourism, which is more interesting than it sounds and air conditioned.

Day 3 in Santorini

The volcano in the morning, Oia in the evening

Boats leave the old port below Fira all morning for the burnt island in the middle of the caldera, which is the live cone of the volcano and the reason the island is shaped the way it is. The crossing takes ten minutes and the walk up takes about an hour.

There is no shade and no water on the island, and the surface is loose gravel, so this is the one day that needs proper shoes and a full bottle. Most trips continue to the hot spring in the next bay, where the boat anchors and you swim in from it.

Then the bus to Oia in the late afternoon. Go down to the bay below the village first, while everyone else is staking out a wall on the main street, and come back up for the sun.

  1. 10:00

    Nea Kameni

    Nature

    The summit of the active volcano, two kilometres across and completely bare. A gravel path climbs to the crater rim at 130 metres past vents that still steam and smell of sulphur. The last eruption was in 1950 and the island is monitored constantly.

  2. 17:00

    Amoudi Bay

    Other

    About three hundred steps below Oia, a crescent of red cliff, a row of fish tavernas on the water and a swim off the rocks past the little chapel. Walk down rather than taking a donkey, and allow twenty five slow minutes to climb back up.

  3. 19:30

    Londsa Castle

    Visit

    The ruined fortress at the western tip of Oia, built in the 15th century against pirates and flattened by the 1956 earthquake. It is the classic sunset spot and it is shoulder to shoulder in summer, so arrive a good hour early or watch from the path just before it instead.

With more time: Oia is genuinely worth an hour in daylight, before the coaches arrive, and the blue domed church on the main square is the one everyone photographs. If the boat trip sounds like a lot, the sunset cruises do the same volcano and hot spring in reverse and drop you in Oia at the end.

Day 4 in Santorini

The frescoes in Fira, then the airport

The wall paintings taken out of the buried town are in a small museum in the middle of Fira, five minutes' walk from the bus station, which makes it the obvious last morning.

They are the reason Akrotiri matters: blue monkeys, boxing children, a fleet of ships in procession, all painted three and a half thousand years ago and preserved by the ash that destroyed the town.

  1. 09:00

    Museum of Prehistoric Thira

    Historic

    One room of frescoes, a small solid gold ibex that turned up in a box on the site, and enough pottery to show a trading town at its height. Small enough to see properly in an hour, which is the right size for a departure day.

  2. 13:00

    Bus to the airport

    Travel

    The airport line leaves from the Fira station and takes about twenty minutes. Allow for it running full in season, and note that check in only opens two hours before the flight.

With more time: With more time, the cable car down the cliff from Fira to the old port is a three minute ride with the best view on the island from a moving vehicle, and the walk back up the zigzag is nearly six hundred steps shared with the donkeys.

Before you go

Where to stay

The caldera rim is what you are paying for, and Fira, Firostefani and Imerovigli sit on it in a continuous line with a footpath running through them. Fira has the bus station, the shops and the cruise crowds; Imerovigli, twenty minutes north, has the same view and is much quieter.

Oia is the most expensive and the most photographed, and staying there means being at the centre of the daily sunset crush. Perissa and Kamari, on the flat east coast, are far cheaper, near the beaches and near the airport, but you lose the caldera entirely and every trip means changing buses in Fira.

Book early. In July and August the island is genuinely full, and the caves with a view are the first things to go.

Getting around

The KTEL buses are cheap, air conditioned and the one bargain on the island. Everything radiates from the bus station in Fira, so a trip from one edge to the other means changing there and paying twice. Tickets are sold on board and only in cash, so keep coins.

Routes are announced rather than numbered and not always displayed, so ask the driver. Timetables thin out badly out of season, with some routes finishing in the afternoon, so check the last departure before committing to an evening somewhere.

Renting a quad or a scooter is popular and worth thinking twice about. The roads are narrow, steep and busy with coaches, and the cheapest rental agencies are the ones that hand you basic cover while describing it as full insurance. Photograph the vehicle before you take it.

Getting there

Flights from Athens take between thirty and forty five minutes and sell out in season well before the ferries do. The airport is tiny: bags are only accepted two hours before departure, and the seating inside the gate area runs out fast.

Ferries from Piraeus come in two speeds, the conventional boat and the high speed catamaran, and land at Athinios port under the cliff on the west side. Buses meet the boats. In rough weather the fast catamarans are the first services to be cancelled.

From the airport, the bus to Fira costs a couple of euros and the taxis cost many times that, with real competition for them when a flight lands.

Eating and drinking

Two things grow well in volcanic ash with almost no rain: tiny intense tomatoes and white grapes. Assyrtiko, the island's main variety, is grown in low woven baskets on the ground rather than on trellises, to shelter the fruit from the wind and catch what moisture the sea mist leaves. It is dry, sharp and very good with fish.

Prices on the caldera edge reflect the view rather than the cooking. The inland villages, Pyrgos, Megalochori, Emporio, charge normal money for better food. Nowhere without posted prices deserves your business.

Fava, a yellow split pea puree, and white aubergine are the two local dishes worth ordering more than once.

When to come

May, June, September and early October are the good months: warm sea, open businesses, tolerable crowds. July and August are hot, full and expensive, and the sunset viewpoints in Oia fill up more than an hour ahead.

The wind is a real factor here. The meltemi blows hard through the summer, which makes the heat bearable on the rim and can close the east coast beaches and cancel ferries.

The mistake people make here is treating Santorini as one view to be photographed from as many angles as possible. The caldera is extraordinary, and it is also the most crowded five kilometres in the Aegean.

The days that stay with you are usually the other ones: a buried street under a roof in the south, a hot spring you swim to from a boat, and a black beach in the late afternoon with nobody on it.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Santorini?
Yes, and it is about right. The island is small, and three nights covers the caldera villages, the volcano, Akrotiri and a beach without repeating yourself. A week here is a beach holiday with a view rather than a longer sightseeing trip, which is a fine thing to want but a different plan.
Do I need to hire a car?
No. The bus network reaches everywhere on these four days and costs almost nothing, as long as you accept changing at Fira and check the last departure. A car helps if you want the inland villages and the wineries on your own schedule, and parking on the rim in August is its own punishment.
Where should I watch the sunset?
Not Oia, at least not every night. Skaros Rock, the path north of Imerovigli and the terraces of Fira all face the same horizon with a small fraction of the crowd. Oia is worth doing once for the spectacle of it, and worth arriving early for.
When is the best time to visit?
Late May to mid June, or September. The sea is warm, everything is open, and the crowds are manageable. July and August bring heat, full hotels and the highest prices of the year; winter is quiet and beautiful, but many hotels and restaurants close and the ferry timetable thins out.
Can I reorder the days?
Easily, and the weather may decide for you. The volcano boats and the exposed beaches are the parts that suffer when the meltemi is blowing, so if a windy day is forecast, move the museum and the archaeology into it and take the boat later. Copy the four days into your own trip and drag them around.