Santorini
is an archipelago of five islands that is part of Greece, and
is located in the Aegean Sea, in the Mediterranean Sea.
‘Santorini’ is also known as ‘Thera’
and ‘Thira’, while the main island is known by the
same name – it was named during the Latin empire after
the cathedral Saint Irene, and was originally known in the Greek
empire as ‘Kallíste’, ‘Strongýle’
and ‘Thera’, although the latter was eventually
reinstated officially.
Santorini has a total area of 90.6 square kilometres (35 square
miles), with the main island measuring 73 square kilometres
(28 square miles), and it has a bus service, a major airline
service and two ports for watercraft.
The Santorini archipelago was originally a single island which
was destroyed, most likely between 1500 BC to 1700 BC, by the
devastating Minoan or Thera volcanic eruption, and before its
destruction the original island was well populated, and it was
rediscovered and resettled after the Bronze Age.
In 2011, Santorini was the home to approximately 15 thousand
people, all inhabiting the main island, except for a small population
of approximately 150 that live on the island of Therasia.
The Santorini islands surround the dormant volcano that destroyed
the original island, which is, out of the surrounding volcanic
chain known as the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, currently the
most volcanically active, and its last eruption was in 1950,
and activity was recorded from 2011-2012.
Santorini has been ruled by a number of different empires throughout
its history, including the Minoan, Greek, Roman, Latin and Ottoman
Turkish empires, and most recently, in 1830, it was reclaimed
by Greece.
Even though up until the 1990s the availability of fresh water
was scarce, people on the main island of Santorini have been
able to establish prominent wine and tomato agricultural industries.
It is said that one of the locations on the original single
Santorini Island, now dubbed as ‘Akrotiri’, is possibly
the lost city of Atlantis, a Greek-originating legend, that
was described by Plato.
Santorini buildings are typically Greek in their architectural
style, and are shaped as strikingly white cubes, although many
of the buildings were destroyed by an earthquake in 1956.