A Santorini shore excursion is a day ashore on Santorini for cruise passengers whose ship anchors inside the caldera. Tenders carry them to the old port below Fira, and the tour then crosses the island. It is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.
This post covers what a Santorini shore excursion includes, the way up from the port and the town of Fira. It also covers Oia, the Akrotiri digs, Pyrgos, Ancient Thera, the southern beaches and how the caldera formed. Imerovigli, the best months and common questions come last.
The sections include Santorini shore excursions and related Santorini tours that can be booked online.
What is a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion is a trip ashore that a cruise passenger joins at a port of call. The ship anchors in the heart of the caldera, the bowl left by the volcano. Passengers land through Athinios or the bay of Fira.
On a Santorini shore excursion, a ship’s tender is a boat that links ship and shore. A port of call is a stop on a cruise route. It helps when a ship is too large for a dock. It also helps in rough seas or when time is short.
In 2015 Santorini had 636 cruise port calls and more than 790,000 passengers. The island was number one in Greece for incoming cruise traffic, with Piraeus second. Each Santorini shore excursion starts in a busy port.
In 2018 Santorini counted 474 cruise ships and 749,286 passenger landings. In 2023 it handled 1,298,968 cruise passengers, second in Greece after Piraeus. That was 57.15 percent more than the year before.
Santorini ran a trial of a daily limit on cruise passengers in 2016. The full system was planned for 2017. In peak season, from late spring to October, a single day can bring 10,000 tourists.
- Approval: The Municipal Port Fund of Thira approves each cruise call.
- Booking: Cruise lines book dates in a system that opens 27 months ahead and closes 16 months ahead.
- Ranking: Five criteria score each request, and length of stay has the biggest share at 20 points.
Greece also charges a levy, a kind of tax, on each cruise passenger who lands. Santorini is in the highest-rate group. Crew members and passengers who land for a medical emergency do not pay it. A Santorini shore excursion therefore carries this levy.
How do cruise passengers reach Fira on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion reaches Fira from the bay in three ways. Passengers can ride the cable car, climb 587 steps or take a donkey. The steps are paved with stone slabs. The Municipal Port Fund of Thira runs the cable car.
Locals call the harbour of Fira Gialos. In Greek, gialos means seashore or beach, and skala means ladder, staircase, gangway or pier. Four mooring buoys hold cruise ships in the bay.
The cable car belongs to the Municipality of Thera. It revived the old port, which hard access had left in decline. A Santorini shore excursion therefore starts at a revived harbour.
Santorini’s trade, stopped by the 1956 earthquake, returned in the late 1970s with the first visitors. The bay was first listed as its own settlement in the 1981 census.
At Athinios the Port Fund runs the passenger station and the car park. It also runs the bus departure point and the taxi rank. A Santorini shore excursion that lands at Athinios finds those services there.
- Law: In August 2018 Greece’s farm ministry changed Law 1197/81 to protect the working donkeys of Fira.
- Care: Donkey owners agreed to microchip all animals and to arrange regular veterinary care.
- Penalty: The rules say violators face at least one year in prison.
Greece’s donkeys fell from 508,000 in 1955 to about 12,000 in 2015. About 2,000 of them remain on Santorini, one of the largest herds in Greece. A Santorini shore excursion by donkey meets one of those animals.
What does Fira show on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion in Fira shows two museums, a mansion and two cathedrals. The Museum of Prehistoric Thera was opened on 26 March 2000. The earthquake of 1956 left its mark on the mansion and on both cathedrals.
On a Santorini shore excursion, the Museum of Prehistoric Thera shows its finds in four units. They cover the history of research, the geology of Thera, the island’s story and Akrotiri’s peak. The story runs to the early 17th century BC.
The first Archaeological Museum of Thera was built in 1902. The German professor Hiller von Gaertringen helped to build it. The architect Konstantinos Dekavallas designed the museum that a Santorini shore excursion visits, right after the 1956 earthquake.
Charalambos Sigalas found the Kore of Thera, a statue of a young woman, on 24 November 2000. She lay just under the surface at South Sellada. She stands 2.48 metres tall and is carved from white Naxian marble.
The Archaeological Museum has a jar with geometric patterns from the early 7th century BC. It is one of the top exhibits. One idea says the Kore fell about 250 metres from the harbour. She was then buried as a sacred object.
- Gyzi Megaron: After the 1956 earthquake only the basement of the Gyzi mansion remained.
- Orthodox cathedral: It was built in 1827 and was severely damaged in the 1956 earthquake.
- Catholic cathedral: While it was repaired, the Church of the Immaculate Conception served as the temporary cathedral.
The Gyzi Megaron cultural centre was founded toward the end of the 1970s. The Catholic Diocese of Thira gave the money and the initiative. A Santorini shore excursion also sees its inner courtyard, partly covered by a cross-shaped dome.
Which sights fill Oia on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion in Oia passes cave houses, captains’ houses, a castle and a maritime museum. The village itself had 478 residents at the 2021 census. The wider Oia community had 838. The castle was built around 1450.
Oia’s census numbers rise and fall. The village counted 1,002 people in 1920, only 296 in 1971 and 763 in 2001. Tiny Ammoudi harbour had 36 residents in 1928 and just one in 2021.
A Santorini shore excursion passes the cave houses of Oia. Builders made them from red or black island stone, with a strong mortar of Theran earth and lime. Mortar is the paste that binds stones together. The yard of one house can be a room of another.
Captains’ houses on a Santorini shore excursion look different. Their fronts are plain and strict, clad in cut red stone. Their roofs are vaulted, with touches of Venetian and neoclassical style.
A Santorini shore excursion can reach the Maritime Museum in Oia. It began in 1951 as the private collection of Captain Antonios Dakoronias. It was first kept in his grandfather’s mansion.
- Rain: Each cave house has a cistern for rain water, filled through small channels called kontouta.
- Churches: The 1956 earthquake destroyed the churches of Agios Georgios and Panagia Platsani in Oia completely.
- Timber: Wood was scarce, so builders imported timber from Ios, Crete and Russia and used vaults.
In 1856 Santorini counted 269 sailing boats, and Oia was called the village of the captains. Its homes are built on the scale of a ship, with low doors and narrow steep steps. A Santorini shore excursion walks through that seafaring past.
What did the Akrotiri digs reveal on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion to Akrotiri reaches a Bronze Age town of two- and three-storey houses. More than 30 multi-storey public and private buildings have come to light so far. Scholars dug there long before the main dig began.
The French geologist Fouqué first suggested that the volcano had buried a culture from before the Greeks. In 1870 Henri Mamet and Henri Gorceix found building remains at Balos, north-east of Akrotiri. They found painted plaster with a lily, storage jars and a copper saw.
A Santorini shore excursion to Akrotiri follows a search that began in 1966. The researcher James Mavor looked for Bronze Age traces, and in 1967 he joined Marinatos. Four metres down, the first trench reached Bronze Age pots.
A Santorini shore excursion shows how Akrotiri builders planned for earthquakes. Walls were rough tuff stone laid in clay mortar and in mud mixed with straw. Timber frames reinforced the walls, and the hollows left by the rotted beams still show.
The paintings of Akrotiri show ships at sea. A fresco is a painting made on wet plaster. The hills in the West House ship frieze match the land west of Akrotiri. So the painting is called the world’s earliest map. The larger ships have between 5 and 24 oars.
- Xeste 3: It had three storeys on a plot of 283 square metres.
- West House: Its frieze shows about 370 people, 120 of them rowers.
- Pig: Experts think a pig’s carcass hung from a beam in room Delta 9.1.
In the earthquake before the eruption, stone steps cracked in the middle. A stack of bed frames waited to be carried away. A Santorini shore excursion follows these traces under a shelter designed by the Greek architect Nikos Fintikakis.
What does Pyrgos show on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion in Pyrgos shows a village with a castle from 1580. The castle is the newest of all the castles of Santorini. It had one entrance, a gate called Portara, and the gate no longer exists.
Over the gate stuck out a square structure with an open floor. Defenders poured hot oil on attackers from it. A system of tunnels under the castle gave the villagers shelter and a way to escape.
The square before the gate was once called High Café. There the nobles of the village met to talk. Pyrgos was the seat of the municipality of Kallisti from 1835 to 1914.
A Santorini shore excursion also meets the old churches. Theotokaki inside the castle is believed to date from the 10th century. Agios Georgios was built in 1754 across from Pyrgos.
The monastery of Profitis Ilias began to be built in 1711. The brothers Gavriil and Ioakeim Belonias, both monks and priests, started it. It once owned a ship to export the goods of Santorini.
- Protected: Pyrgos was declared a protected settlement in 1995 and has 56 churches.
- Icons: Aghia Triada, a convent church ruined in 1956, shows 17th and 18th century icons.
- Census: The Pyrgos community counted 732 residents in 2001 and 912 in 2011.
- Exile: After 1839 Theophilos Kairis was exiled to the monastery, and Dimitris Glinos followed in 1936.
The 1956 earthquake badly damaged the castle. Then the army pulled down parts of houses that were not beyond repair. A Santorini shore excursion therefore meets a castle that an earthquake and an army both damaged.
What does Ancient Thera show on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion to Ancient Thera shows a temple, a theatre and a royal hall. Its ridge city has a story that runs from the myth of Theras to Ptolemaic rule. Later digs brought the ruins back into view.
Herodotus tells that Theras came from the line of Cadmus. Theras ruled Sparta as regent, a stand-in ruler, for his nephews Eurysthenes and Procles. He then led Spartans and Minyans to the island.
A Santorini shore excursion enters the ancient city at Sellada. This low saddle lies between Mesa Vouno and the higher Profitis Ilias. Stone-paved roads on the slopes joined the city to its springs, farmland and ports.
A Santorini shore excursion walks a ridge whose windy, narrow ends held the places of worship. The homes filled the calmer middle. The city also had a road network with a sewage system, which carries away dirty water.
A Santorini shore excursion reaches the Temple of Apollo Karneios. Its cella, or inner room, measures 7.3 by 12.15 m and is cut into the rock. Beside it, a terrace on a wall of huge stones hosted the Karneia, the festivals of Apollo.
- Ptolemies: The kings of Hellenistic Egypt held Thera from 288 BC to 145 BC.
- Royal Stoa: Built in the early 3rd century BC, it was repaired in the mid-2nd century AD.
- Theatre: It also served as a council house, and its stage building dates to the 1st century AD.
Hiller von Gaertringen published his five-volume report Thera in Berlin between 1898 and 1903. Wolfram Hoepfner of the Free University of Berlin led new digs from 1990 to 1994. Digs thus shape what a Santorini shore excursion sees.
Which beaches lie on the south coast on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion on the south coast meets Kamari, Perissa, Perivolos, Agios Georgios and Vlychada. All five held a Blue Flag award in 2022. Red Beach and a church with a long history add rock and story.
In 2022 the Greek nature society behind the Blue Flag gave it to 581 Greek beaches. The Blue Flag is an award for clean, safe beaches. The Municipality of Thira held Blue Flags for Agios Georgios, Vlychada, Kamari 1, Kamari 2, Perivolos and Perissa.
The 2023 list names five beaches for the municipality, and Perissa is no longer among them. The municipality had four Blue Flag beaches in 2016 and six in each year from 2017 to 2019.
A Santorini shore excursion to Red Beach meets cliffs that researchers scanned with a ground LiDAR laser. They flew a drone around them 3.5 years later to compare the surveys. Any repair must also protect the nearby archaeological site.
A Santorini shore excursion to Vlychada meets a beach on thick Minoan pumice layers. The deposits of the second, third and fourth eruption phases can be told apart there. The tallest vertical cliff surveyed there is 38 m high.
- Second phase: Surge deposits at the base settled at 100 to 250 °C.
- Third phase: A coarse ignimbrite, or ash-flow rock, formed at low temperature where magma met water.
- Fourth phase: A tan to pink ignimbrite of fine ash holds a high share of crushed rock.
A Santorini shore excursion to Perissa meets the basilica of Agia Irini, the largest church on Santorini. Experts think the eruption of 726 ruined it. Emperor Leo III hurried to rebuild it as a domed church.
How did the caldera form on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion crosses a caldera, a huge bowl left when a volcano collapsed. The Minoan eruption dropped the ground by hundreds of metres, and the sea then flooded the empty basin. Earlier and later eruptions shaped the bay.
After the Cape Riva eruption came about 18 thousand years of only minor explosive activity. A central island called Pre-Kameni began to grow inside the flooded caldera about 20.2 thousand years ago.
A 2006 study dated an olive tree buried alive in the Minoan pumice to 1627-1600 BC. A Greenland ice spike of 1644 ± 20 BC was once tied to Santorini. Ash tests since 2003 point to Mount Aniakchak instead.
The third Minoan phase built a cone of ash rock. It sealed the old caldera off from the sea. In the fourth phase, pyroclastic flows swept out, which are avalanches of hot ash and gas. Those beside the north-west strait settled at 150 to 350 °C.
A Santorini shore excursion crosses a basin that was dry when the eruption ended. The sea then rushed in through a channel cut in the north-west wall.
- Channel: Cutting the north-west channel moved 2.0 to 2.5 cubic kilometres of rock.
- Collapse check: The collapse volume of 33.1 cubic kilometres matches the erupted volume.
- Tsunami layer: A tsunami deposit lies 10 to 12 m above sea level on Santorini.
A submarine eruption in 726 spread up to 3.1 cubic kilometres of pumice and ash. The ground swelled in 2011 and 2012. Both happened under the bay that a Santorini shore excursion crosses.
What does Imerovigli show on a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion to Imerovigli shows chapels, a convent and the ruins of Skaros. Its past runs from a castle town to a village under special building rules. The village is called the balcony of the Aegean.
Imerovigli’s convent of Saint Nicholas began on 6 December 1651. The Gyzis family was among the rare Orthodox families inside Skaros castle. It turned its private chapel into a convent for women. A convent is a home for nuns.
A Santorini shore excursion that reaches the convent finds an important Byzantine icon of Saint Nicholas. It also finds a fine carved wooden iconostasis, the screen that holds the icons.
The church of Panagia Maltezi is named after an icon found in the sea near Malta. By tradition, Captain Theodoros Borlis lifted the icon from the sea after a dream of the Virgin Mary.
The first Panagia Maltezi church dated from the 19th century. It fell in the 1956 earthquake, and a new church took its place. A Santorini shore excursion to Imerovigli now meets the newer church.
- 1928: The Imerovigli area had 799 inhabitants.
- 2001: The village had 467 inhabitants.
- 2011: The village had 431 inhabitants, and nearby Panagia Kalou had 104.
The houses of the Skaros castle town were built almost entirely of stone. An earthquake in 1817 damaged the town badly, and little survives today. People took building materials from the ruins to make homes elsewhere.
Which months suit a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion meets a different island in each season. Airport reports show a quiet winter, a busy summer and shoulder months in between. Church feasts and the port’s low season add clues for choosing a month.
Winter is quiet at the airport. In February it counted 31,773 passengers, and none flew on international routes. In the December report of the year before, only 12 of 35,327 passengers flew on international routes.
In April the airport counted 150,477 passengers, and 46,494 of them flew on international routes. In late spring, the fifth month, it counted 256,780 passengers. A Santorini shore excursion in these months meets a growing crowd.
In July the airport counted 459,432 passengers and 3,610 flights. Of these passengers, 314,112 flew on international routes. The summer meltemi wind carries air from southern Russia, so the sky looks deep blue.
In the September report of the year before, the airport counted 360,492 passengers. In the October report, it counted 236,881, and 110,369 flew on international routes. By then, a Santorini shore excursion meets a thinning crowd.
- 9 July: Kamari holds a church feast at Agios Pankratios.
- 29 August: The Imerovigli chapel of Agios Ioannis the Beheaded celebrates its feast.
- 22 October: Emporio honours Saint Abercius, protector of wine and the kanava cellars.
- 12 December: Emporio celebrates Saint Spyridon, patron saint of the village.
The municipal port fund of Thira sets a low season for cruise calls. It runs from 1 January to 30 April and from 1 October to 31 December. A Santorini shore excursion then falls in the low season.
What do travelers want to know about a Santorini shore excursion?
A Santorini shore excursion brings simple questions about distance, old names, churches, past trade, villages and power. Census counts, church lists and old trade records give clear answers. Each one shows a small piece of island life a day ashore can touch.
How far does a Santorini shore excursion lie from Piraeus?
The island lies 128 nautical miles from Piraeus, south of Ios and west of Anafi. The island’s airport stands 39 metres above sea level. West winds above force 5 make landing hard, and flights are normally cancelled then.
Which old names matter for a Santorini shore excursion?
Under Ottoman rule the Turks called the island Dermetzik, which means small mill. The name possibly came from the small windmills that stood out from far away. Old names also included Filiteri or Filotera, Kalavria, Karisti, Tefsia, Thiramene and Rhenia.
How big is the Catholic community met on a Santorini shore excursion?
In 2010 the Catholic diocese, or church district, counted 450 Catholics, about 4 percent of the island’s people. It belongs to the church province of Naxos, Andros, Tinos and Mykonos. Petros Stefanou has been the bishop since 2014. Frangkiskos Papamanolis served from 27 June 1974 until 2014.
How rich was the island before any Santorini shore excursion?
In 1770 about 9,000 people lived on the island. Its taxes show it was richer than the other islands. By 1852 it had 7,222 inhabitants and was the second trade centre of the Cyclades after Syros. It owned 40 percent of the ships of the Cyclades.
How big are the villages of a Santorini shore excursion?
The 2011 census counted 1,593 people in the village of Messaria and 1,238 in the village of Karterados. It counted only 9 people at the port of Athinios. The Monastery of Profitis Ilias had 19 people. A day ashore therefore meets places of different size.
Where does the power for a Santorini shore excursion come from?
Electricity for Santorini and Therasia comes mainly from a power station at Monolithos in the east. The station runs on diesel engines and gas turbines. Together the two islands have 75.09 megawatts of thermal power and 0.25 megawatts of renewable power.