Santorini, whitewashed churches with blue domes.
The island has had a number of names over the centuries, from Stronghyle, meaning "round", later Calliste, then Thera after an ancient hero, finally to Santa Rini, named by foreign sailors for an island church dedicated to seafarers. The official name is Thera. Initially the shape of Santorini was round, an inactive volcano on the same violent geologic formation as Mt Etna in Sicily, and Mt Vesuvius and Stromboli near Naples.
Santorini is one of the southernmost islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, about 130 miles from Athens, 68 miles from Crete, and 147 miles from Rhodes. What is left of the island after the eruption is a caldera, the outer walls of the volcano, a land area of about 30 sq miles, with a population of about 8,000. The largest island is the horseshoe shaped Thera, with small Therasia and smaller Aspronisi at the western opening to the Aegean. Interestingly, Nea Kameni, the little cone-shaped island in the middle of the bay, is the crater of the present volcano and tourists can visit and climb up to the rim of the crater to get a whiff of the noxious fumes.
When the volcano erupted in around 1650 BC, the center of the island sank (giving rise to the Atlantis legend) to a depth of about 1200 feet, deep enough for all but the largest ships. Our ship moored in the bay, and we took a tender to the small dock at the foot of the cliff below the main town of Fira. These cliffs rise about 1150 ft above sea level, and are marked by varying layers of sediment of black, red or grey. At the top is the whitewashed string of houses and churches of Fira and neighboring villages.
Again, my travel companions L. and G. took a separate excursion to one of the villages for wine-tasting, while C. and I caught the tour bus for the archaeological site of Akrotiri, with first a stop at the highest point of the island -- the monastery Mikros Prophitis Elias. At 2000 ft above sea level the view was tremendous. Our tour guide Georgina was most delightful, and regaled us with jokes to relieve our anxiety watching the bus driver maneuver around the tight mountain curves, with no guard rails.
On top of Santorini at the Monastery of the Prophet Elijah. Windy, and what a view!
The excavations at Akrotiri started in 1967 by the famed Greek archaeologist Prof. Spiros Marinatos. He had waited for 30 years to test his hypothesis that the volcanic eruption of Thera had caused the destruction of Minoan Crete, 68 miles to the south, through earthquakes, dust and ash, seismic waves, and a massive tsunami 70 meters high crashing into the coastal cities on Crete. Prof Marinatos found much more at Akrotiri, a Pompeii-like preserved Bronze Age city encased in volcanic ash and pumice, with intact walls of three-story houses, pottery, frescoes, furniture, even remnants of food.
The 3,700 year-old archaeological site of Akrotiri, protected under this modern building
Were these large pottery vessels for storing food for the community?
Looking down on a building, with the rain gutters still intact, and evidence of the sewer line under the street.
Clay pipes from the aqueduct that supplied water to the city.
The site has had a new million-euro enclosure constructed to protect it while archaeological studies continue. Georgina herded our tour group around, explaining, directing our attention, offering the latest theories, speculating with us in answering our questions.
Even with only about half of the Bronze Age site excavated, some details of life at this site may be inferred from archaeological evidence. For instance, the people who lived here prior to the volcanic eruption numbered from 3,000 to 5,000 (I've read estimates of up to 30,000 inhabitants), in an egalitarian social structure with women enjoying the same rights as men. They built a city of two and three story multi-purpose houses, with workshops on the ground floor, and living quarters above, no temples and no palaces. The buildings had indoor plumbing and sewer pipes carried off the wastes. The interior walls were decorated with frescoes of such brilliance and, unlike Egyptian art, was so natural and free that they look quite modern. The ladies depicted in the frescoes have elegant coiffures, clothing, and signs of lipstick and nail polish!
No written records have been discovered, and the name of the city is unknown, called Akrotiri now because of the modern town nearby. To date, and unlike at Pompeii, the excavations have not uncovered any human skeletons buried in the ash and pumice, and no objects of value except a small gold figure of an ibex. Archaeologists have theorized that the residents heeded the warning signs, whether small earthquake rumblings, or perhaps the volcano had been sending out clouds of smoke. It may be the people interpreted these signs correctly and gathered up their valuables and escaped the catastrophe -- to where, no one knows.
As we filed back out into the sunshine and on the bus, Georgina told us another interesting tidbit, that centuries after the volcano's eruption provided the remaining population with an unexpected industry, that of quarrying pumice. She told us there would be samples of pumice rocks for sale in Fira, and that Santorini had a booming business exporting very fine pumice, low enough density to float, and very valuable for making an insulating concrete. She said the pumice quarries on Santorini supplied the pumice for making the concrete for the Suez Canal in the 1860's.
The morning excursion over, the tour bus left us off in Fira at the top of the cliff overlooking the bay, near the beautiful Greek Orthodox monastery, and C. and I started looking for L. and G. for the afternoon of exploring -- and, naturally, a café for some ouzo!
Next: wandering around Santorini!
