Santorini South Part Tour – Private, 5 Hours

The Santorini South Part Tour in Full

The Santorini south part tour is five hours through the half of the island that holds its substance rather than its postcard: the Akrotiri excavation, the Red Beach, the wind-carved cliffs at Vlychada, the long black sand at Perissa and Perivolos, and the wine country around Megalochori and Pyrgos. Where the north gives you the caldera views, the south gives you the archaeology, the geology and the vineyards. Book with Santorini Tours, a licensed local operator.

It is priced per vehicle, not per seat: 280€ for one or two guests, 328€ for three or four, 376€ for five or six, 400€ for seven or eight, rising to 800€ for the largest coach parties. A couple pays 140€ each; a family of four pays 82€ each. Like every one of our santorini private tours the vehicle, the guide and the day are yours.

It pairs deliberately with the north part tour at the same price. Take both across two days and you have covered the island without repeating a single stop – which is the most efficient two days anyone can spend here.

What the Santorini south part tour price includes

Pickup and drop-off anywhere on the island including both ports, five hours with a licensed English-speaking driver-guide, a private air-conditioned vehicle, fuel, tolls, parking and bottled water. Not included: Akrotiri entry at around 12€, museum tickets, winery tasting fees, food, and the Fira cable car at 6€ each way.

Santorini south part tour cost against the alternatives

A coach seat to the south runs about 90€ a head on a fixed route that cannot enter Megalochori or reach Vlychada. Against that, the santorini south part tour cost is lower from four people upward and you keep control of the day. The santorini south part tour price does not change with season, day of the week or how far in advance you book.

Route and Timing of the Santorini South Part Tour

Five hours, four or five principal stops, ordered on the morning around where the cruise ships are.

Akrotiri

The reason most people book the Santorini south part tour. A Bronze Age town buried by the eruption around 1600 BC and preserved under metres of ash: streets, drainage, three-storey houses with windows and staircases, storage jars still standing where they were left. Unlike Pompeii there are no bodies – the population appears to have left before the eruption – which gives the site a strange, orderly emptiness. It sits under a modern shelter, so it works in any weather.

The Red Beach

Iron-red cliffs dropping into blue water, five minutes from Akrotiri. It is genuinely spectacular from the viewpoint and genuinely small once you are on it, and there have been rockfalls, so access is periodically restricted. We take you to the viewpoint and give you an honest assessment of whether to go down that day.

Vlychada

The strangest coastline on the island and, for our money, the best. Wind and rain have carved the pale volcanic cliffs into shapes that look closer to a moonscape or a Gaudí façade than to Greece. Far fewer people than the Red Beach and far more to photograph.

Perissa and Perivolos

A single long black sand strip on the south coast, backed by the mass of Mesa Vouno. Organised, with beach bars, and the water shelves quickly. In July and August the sand is too hot to walk on barefoot in the afternoon – that is not an exaggeration.

The wine country

Megalochori and Pyrgos, where the Santorini south part tour usually finishes. Vaulted mansions built on Vinsanto money, free-standing bell towers, and vineyards where the vines are trained into low baskets against the wind.

Akrotiri in Depth

Akrotiri deserves more than a paragraph, because it is the single most important thing on the Santorini south part tour and most visitors arrive knowing almost nothing about it.

The town was a major Aegean port, in contact with Crete, mainland Greece, Egypt and the Levant. It had paved streets, a drainage system running beneath them, and houses of two and three storeys with plumbing and internal staircases. That is a level of urban planning that would not be matched in Europe for centuries afterwards.

Around 1600 BC the volcano erupted. The town was buried under metres of pumice and ash, and the ash is why it survives: it sealed the buildings rather than burning them, preserving walls, furniture impressions, pottery and above all the frescoes.

The frescoes are the reason the site changed archaeology. The Spring Fresco, the Fishermen, the Boxing Boys, the miniature Flotilla frieze – these are wall paintings of a sophistication nobody expected from the Bronze Age Aegean, and they are alive in a way Egyptian art of the same period is not. The originals are in the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira; the site itself shows you the rooms they came from.

What you will not see is a single body. The inhabitants appear to have had warning – earthquakes preceded the eruption – and left. No valuables have been found either, which supports an organised evacuation rather than a panic. Where they went is unknown.

The site is walkable in about forty-five minutes on the Santorini south part tour, longer if you want it. Entry is around 12€ and is not included in the tour price. One legal note: only a state-licensed guide may interpret inside the site itself, so your driver-guide will brief you thoroughly outside. If you want a licensed archaeologist walking you through it, that is our historical tour.

The Beaches of the South, Honestly Assessed

Santorini’s beaches are volcanic. That means dark sand or pebble, dramatic cliffs, clear deep water and no shallow turquoise shelf. Anyone arriving expecting a Caribbean beach will be disappointed; anyone arriving expecting drama will not.

Perissa is the longest and the most developed, with a paved promenade, tavernas and sunbeds along most of it. Good for a full day, easy for families, and the water gets deep quickly.

Perivolos continues the same strip southward and is marginally smarter – more beach bars, more music, more of a scene in high season.

Vlychada is the one the Santorini south part tour is really for. The cliffs behind it have been sculpted by wind and rain into pale, folded shapes. At the far end there are no organised sunbeds at all. It is the most photographed stretch of coast on the island by people who know the island.

The Red Beach is the famous one and the most compromised. Small, pebbly, crowded when accessible, and subject to rockfall. Beautiful from above.

White Beach sits next to the Red Beach and is reachable only by boat, so it is not part of a land itinerary – but ask your guide how to reach it if you want a half day on the water.

Kamari is technically on the eastern side of Mesa Vouno rather than the south coast, but it is close, and it is the more family-oriented of the black sand beaches.

On the Santorini south part tour there is time to swim at one of these, usually at the end. Bring a towel if that appeals; the season runs comfortably from late May to mid-October.

The Wine Country on the Santorini South Part Tour

Santorini makes wine that exists nowhere else, and the south is where it is grown. The reason is the ash: the soil is volcanic, poor and porous, and the island receives almost no rain.

Vines here are ungrafted. Phylloxera, which destroyed almost every vineyard in Europe in the nineteenth century, never took hold in this soil, so some root systems are centuries old. The vines are trained into low woven baskets called koulara, which shelter the fruit from the meltemi and catch the morning humidity that is effectively the only water they get. You will not see this growing method anywhere else in Europe, and it is worth stopping the vehicle to look at properly.

Assyrtiko is the grape: bone dry, high in acid, mineral and faintly saline. It is one of the great white wines of the Mediterranean. Athiri and Aidani are blended alongside it, softer and more floral. Vinsanto is the island’s sweet wine, made from grapes sun-dried on mats for up to two weeks and then aged for years in oak – the wine that built the mansions in Megalochori.

The Santorini south part tour passes through the wine country and can include a winery stop with a tasting, paid at the door and usually 15€ to 25€ a head. If wine is the reason you are travelling rather than a stop on the way, our private wine tour visits several estates with the tastings included.

Pyrgos, Megalochori and Emporio

The inland villages of the south are where the island still lives, and they are the part of the Santorini south part tour that people are most surprised by.

Pyrgos

The highest inhabited point on the island, wrapped around a Venetian castle. Walking up through it takes twenty minutes and gives a view over both coasts, the airport, the vineyards and the caldera in one turn of the head. On Good Friday the entire village is lit with thousands of candles and tin lanterns – the most beautiful thing that happens on Santorini all year.

Megalochori

The Vinsanto village. Vaulted mansions behind high walls, free-standing bell towers in the square, and lanes too narrow for a coach. Nothing here has been arranged for visitors, which is exactly the point.

Emporio

The largest village on the island and almost entirely missed by tour buses. It has a genuine medieval kastelli – a defensive village-within-a-village where the outer houses form the wall – and a warren of lanes built to confuse pirates, which still works on visitors. Above it stand the windmills on the ridge.

Any of the three can be added to the Santorini south part tour. If you want the one visitors never reach, ask for Emporio.

Who Should Book the Santorini South Part Tour

Anyone with an interest in archaeology. Akrotiri is the most significant Bronze Age site in the Aegean outside Crete, and the Santorini south part tour is the cheapest way to reach it with a guide.

Two-day visitors. North on one day, south on the other. No overlap, 560€ for both, and you will have seen the island properly.

Anyone staying in Oia or the north. The south is the half you are least likely to reach on your own, and the drive is longer than the map suggests.

Wine drinkers. The vineyards are all here. Among our santorini day tours this is the one that puts you in the wine country without committing to a full tasting day.

Photographers. Vlychada in the late afternoon is the most distinctive coastline in the Cyclades and almost nobody photographs it.

Not for you if your priority is the caldera villages and the Oia sunset – take the north tour – or if you are on a standard cruise call, where the shore excursion is timed to tenders and this is not.

Booking a private santorini south part tour

Send your dates and party size. An 80€ deposit confirms it and the balance is paid to your guide on the day. Santorini south part tour booking is handled by us directly, never through a marketplace, and free cancellation runs to seven days before. For a private santorini south part tour the best dates are Tuesdays and Wednesdays outside the peak weeks, when fewer ships are alongside and Akrotiri is quiet.

Santorini South Part Tour 2026: What to Know

For the santorini south part tour 2026 season the direct-booking discount is already applied to every rate on this page, so the santorini south part tour 2026 price you read is the price you pay. Start times have moved earlier through July and August because Akrotiri now fills by mid-morning, and the Vlychada stop is confirmed on every departure rather than offered as an option.

Availability for the santorini south part tour 2026 is tightest from mid-July to the end of August. Everything else in the season is generally available at a few days’ notice. The best santorini south part tour months, if you have a choice, are May, late September and October.

How it compares with our other routes

Against the six-hour sightseeing tour at 340€, the Santorini south part tour is an hour shorter, 60€ cheaper, and stays entirely in the south. Against the eight-hour full day tour at 460€, it covers less ground in less time but gives Akrotiri and the beaches proper attention. Against the semi private small group tour at 70€ per person, it costs more for a couple and less from four people up, with the vehicle yours.

The Eruption That Made the South

Everything on the Santorini south part tour is a consequence of one event. Around 1600 BC the magma chamber beneath the island emptied in an eruption several times the size of Krakatoa. The centre of the island collapsed into the sea, leaving the crescent you stand on and the flooded caldera at its centre.

The south is where the evidence is thickest. The pale layers you see cut into the cliffs at Vlychada and along the road to Akrotiri are pumice and ash from that eruption, tens of metres deep in places. The red of the Red Beach is oxidised iron in older volcanic rock. The black of Perissa and Perivolos is ground-down lava. The soil that grows Assyrtiko is the same ash, which is why the wine tastes of minerals and why the vines survive with no rain.

The eruption buried Akrotiri, sent tsunamis against the north coast of Crete, and appears in the archaeological record as a rupture in Minoan civilisation. It is also, with some regularity, proposed as the origin of the Atlantis story – Plato describes an advanced island civilisation destroyed in a single day and night. Guides on the Santorini south part tour are careful to mark where the evidence stops and the speculation starts, but it is a reasonable thing to think about while standing on the ash.

Practical Notes for the Santorini South Part Tour

Pickup. Anywhere on the island, both ports included. If your hotel is on a pedestrian caldera path we agree the nearest vehicle point when you book.

Walking. Around two hours on your feet across the five. Akrotiri is flat but on wooden walkways; the villages are cobbles and steps; deep black sand is harder work than it looks.

Shade. Akrotiri is roofed, which makes the Santorini south part tour the better choice of the two half-day routes in high summer or in rain.

Shoes. Grip, not sandals. This is the item people get wrong.

Entry fees. Akrotiri around 12€. The Fira museums a few euro each if you add them. Tastings 15€ to 25€.

Payment. 80€ deposit, balance on the day, cash or card, no booking fee.

Changes on the day. Free. Tell your guide at the start you would rather skip the Red Beach and spend an hour at Vlychada, and that is what happens.

What to bring

Sun protection from April onward, water, a light layer for the wind, cash in small notes, and swimwear with a towel if you want the beach at the end.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Santorini South Part Tour

How long is it? Five hours, pickup to drop-off.

How much does it cost? From 280€ per vehicle for one or two guests, up to 800€ for the largest coach parties. Per vehicle, not per person.

Does it include Akrotiri entry? No. Entry is around 12€ and paid at the gate.

Can my guide take me inside Akrotiri? They can take you there and brief you fully outside. Only a state-licensed guide may interpret inside the site itself – that is our historical tour.

Is hotel pickup included? Yes, from anywhere on the island including both ports.

Is there time to swim? Usually, at the end. Say so when you book and we will build the timing around it.

Can I combine it with the north tour? Yes, and most two-day visitors do. Together they make one of the most complete santorini tour packages we run.

Is it suitable for children? Over about six, yes, particularly with the beach at the end. Akrotiri holds most children’s attention better than a viewpoint does.

Is it wheelchair accessible? Akrotiri largely is, on its walkways. The villages are not. Tell us and we will build a route that works.

What languages? English as standard and Greek any date. Our santorini guided tours run in six languages with notice.

How does it compare with santorini excursions sold on a ship? Cheaper for a family and far more flexible – but a cruise line guarantees the ship waits and no independent operator can.

Where can I see all santorini tours prices? Every itinerary and rate sits on the santorini tours page. Our santorini island tours run from one hour on horseback to a full eight-hour day.

Book the Santorini South Part Tour

Send your dates and party size and we will confirm availability the same day. To reserve a specific itinerary directly: south part tour booking, north part, sightseeing, full day, famous sights, sunset, shore excursion, historical, personalised, food experience, wine, horse riding.

The Santorini south part tour takes an 80€ deposit with the balance paid on the day. If we cancel for weather you are refunded in full, without having to ask.

When to Take the Santorini South Part Tour

April to early June. The best window. The slopes are still green, the light is clean, Akrotiri is quiet and five hours outdoors is comfortable. A Santorini south part tour in May is close to ideal.

July and August. Hot, bright and busy. The Santorini south part tour holds up better than the northern route in high summer for one reason: Akrotiri is roofed, so a substantial part of the day is out of the sun. The black sand, on the other hand, is genuinely too hot to walk on barefoot after midday. Start early and book two to four weeks ahead.

Late September and October. The grape harvest is finished, the sea is still warm, the crowds have thinned and the late light on the Vlychada cliffs is the best of the year. Many regulars think this is when the Santorini south part tour is at its best.

November to March. On request. Akrotiri stays open with shorter hours, the beaches are empty, and the wind can be serious. For a second visit it is a completely different island, and the Santorini south part tour price does not change.

Whatever the month, the thing that shapes the day is cruise traffic. Ships are alongside from roughly ten in the morning to six in the evening, and Akrotiri fills with coach groups in the middle of that window. A Santorini south part tour that starts early avoids it entirely.

What People Get Wrong About the South

Assuming the Red Beach is the highlight. It is the famous one and the most compromised – small, crowded and subject to rockfall. Vlychada, ten minutes away, is stranger and better and has a fraction of the people. On the Santorini south part tour we show you both and let you decide.

Skipping the Prehistoric Museum. Akrotiri’s frescoes are not at Akrotiri; they are in Fira. Forty minutes and a few euro, and it turns the excavation from a field of stones into a town. Add it to the Santorini south part tour if you want the archaeology to land.

Treating the villages as filler. Emporio’s kastelli and Pyrgos’s castle are the two most intact medieval survivals on the island, and almost nobody visits them.

Expecting a swimming beach in April. The sea does not warm up until late May. Beautiful to look at; brisk to enter.

Booking it against a cruise call. Five hours plus tendering is tight. Take the shore excursion, which is built for it.

Wearing the wrong shoes. Said three times on this page because it is the single most common mistake on any Santorini south part tour.

Why Book the Santorini South Part Tour Direct

Every tour on this site is operated by us. We are licensed by the Greek National Tourism Organisation, the guides are our employees and the vehicles are ours – nothing is resold to a subcontractor. Booking a Santorini south part tour through a marketplace adds fifteen to thirty percent in commission and puts a layer between you and the person who will actually meet you at your hotel.

Booking direct gets you the 2026 rate already discounted, a reply from someone on the island, an 80€ deposit rather than payment in full, and the ability to reshape the Santorini south part tour the night before. If this itinerary is not right for you, we will say so and point you at the one that is.

Everywhere the Santorini South Part Tour Can Reach

Any of these can be built into a private itinerary. Each has its own page with what to see and how long to allow.

Caldera villages: Fira · Firostefani · Imerovigli · Oia · Finikia · Baxedes

Inland villages: Pyrgos · Megalochori · Emporio · Mesaria · Karterados · Vothonas · Vourvoulos · Exo Gonia · Mesa Gonia · Pigadia

Beaches: Perissa · Perivolos · Kamari · Vlychada · Monolithos · Red Beach · White Beach · Agios Georgios · Agia Paraskevi

Sites and landmarks: Akrotiri · Ancient Thira · Akrotiri Lighthouse · Nea Kameni · Palia Kameni · Thirasia · Athinios Port

All our tours: All Santorini tours · Full day tour · Sightseeing tour · Personalised tour · North part tour · Famous sights tour · Sunset tour · Shore excursion · Caldera tour · Food experience · Wine tour · Historical tour · Horse riding · Small group tour

Planning and services: Private transfers · Transfers to Oia and Finikia · Transfers to other villages · Villages of Santorini · History of Santorini · Tours near you · Languages we guide in · Food and fun tours · Gay friendly tours · Our tour buses · Daily tours · Day tours · FAQ · Gallery · Tour photo gallery · About us · Contact · Blog