Akrotiri is the most important archaeological site in the Cyclades and one of the strangest places you can walk through in Greece. A Bronze Age town was buried under metres of volcanic ash around 1600 BC and simply stopped, and what the ash preserved is a town rather than a palace: streets, drains, staircases, pots still standing where they were left.
What survived
Buildings of two and three storeys with their walls standing to full height in places. Paved streets with a drainage system running underneath them, including clay pipes carrying waste water, which is roughly 3,000 years earlier than most people assume such a thing existed.
Furniture did not survive, but the ash set around it and left voids. Archaeologists poured plaster into the cavities and recovered the shapes of wooden beds and tables, the same technique used at Pompeii.
The detail that unsettles everyone
No human remains have been found, and almost no jewellery or valuables. The inhabitants appear to have left before the eruption, presumably warned by earthquakes, and taken what they could carry. Where they went is unknown.
Whether this is the origin of the Atlantis story is argued about constantly. It is a good story. The evidence for it is thin.
The frescoes
The wall paintings from Akrotiri are the reason the site matters to art history: fishermen, two young boxers, antelopes, a miniature frieze of a fleet arriving at a town. They are not at the site. Most are in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, with some in the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira.
See the Fira museum on the same day as the site. It supplies everything the site cannot show you.
Visiting
- The whole excavation is under a modern bioclimatic roof, so it is shaded and cool. In August this is the only comfortable archaeological site in the Cyclades.
- Walkways are raised above the streets. Allow 60 to 90 minutes.
- Go early. Coach parties arrive mid-morning and the walkways are narrow.
- It is about 15km from Fira on the southwest coast, near Red Beach.
- Only a fraction of the town has been excavated. Most of it is still under the ash.
Combine it with
Red Beach is a 10 minute drive away, below a cliff of oxidised red rock, though rockfall has closed the direct path at various times and you should check locally. The Akrotiri lighthouse at the southern tip is 15 minutes further and is the best sunset spot on the island.
What this page is
An archaeology guide, and nothing more. This agency works in Athens and Mykonos, has no operation on Santorini, and is not represented here by anyone. If you are seeing the Akrotiri frescoes in Athens, the Athens page is the relevant one for that leg of the trip.
