The Santorini volcano is the island itself. The caldera is its flooded crater, formed when the centre collapsed around 1600 BC, and the cliff you photograph is the inside wall. It is still active: Nea Kameni last erupted in 1950 and the system is monitored continuously. Santorini Tours is a local operator running private tours and transfers on the island.
The amazing history of Santorini island and the volcano
Santorini is one of the most known islands of Greece and one of the most loved destinations for a great number of tourists from all over the world. Many of the people come here because of the cosmopolitan life you can enjoy in your vacations. The truth is that Santorini is much more than this.
Santorini have been a homeland for the ancient Greek since the 4th millennium BC. People have lived in here for a lot of centuries in a row so there is a lot of history and places with a great archaeological interest. Everything on the island is celestial. It is like a living paradise.
We have found some very great suggestions of how you can spend your time here on this magnetic island and learn everything about the history, the lifestyle and the volcano explosions during the past.
1. Oia
Oia is definitely one of the most visited and most photographed place in Greece. Lovely sunsets and idelyc local sights, were a source of inspiration to a great number of artists.
The village of Oia is set in half by a central road. The first part faces Caldera and you can see the houses into the rocks, at the other side you can enjoy the view of the houses of the captains. Here you can also find a lot of orthodox churches and catholic basilicas and a lovely castle with a panoramic view on the island.
Take a Santorini impressive Caldera private tour and enjoy the place with your company. You can choose to stay in one of the most known hotels in Santorini.
2. The historical Santorini
A Santorini historical private tour will give you the chance to make a travel on the past years and see how the people used to lived and how they raised after the distractions of the volcano.
An Akrotiri private guided transfer is the ideal thing to do in order to visit the archaeological place and get well informed about the ancient culture and see the magnificent constructions that survived from the destruction.
3. Taste the great wines of Santorini
Santorini has a lot of traditional vineyards and they produce some of the most great wines in Greece. If you fancy to see more about the traditional local wines you can choose a private tour. Take the chance to taste that ambrosia.
If you visit Santorini, we recommend, for the wine lovers to book a private tour. With that way you are going to have some enjoyable and romantic moments that you are going to remember for ever.
Explore Santorini island with Santorinitours
Vacations in Santorini island can be an unforgettable experience if you choose to explore the place with people that have all the needed knowledge and the means of transportation to guide you around this big island, you can take look to our luxury mini buses.
You don’t have to be in the queue for hours in order to visit a place or even take a photo. Private tours and private transfers will make everything easier and more enjoyable.
Would you like to feel like a living God; If the answer is yes, Satorini is the ideal place for your vacations!
See more about your vacations on Santorini island:
- Winter in Santorini, why you have to visit Santorini during winter
- Enjoying Greece by travel channel
- Idyllic isles of Greece
- Santorini tours offering something for all of us
The Santorini Volcano: The Short Answer
The island is the volcano. What visitors call the caldera is the crater of the santorini volcano, flooded by the sea after the centre of the island collapsed into an emptied magma chamber around 1600 BC. The cliff you photograph from Oia is the inside wall of it.
The santorini volcano is still active. The two black islets in the middle of the bay, Nea Kameni and Palia Kameni, are the modern cone growing back, and the most recent eruption was in 1950. The system is monitored continuously and there is no current cause for alarm.
You can walk on it: boats from the old port below Fira land on Nea Kameni, and a thirty-minute climb over loose scoria takes you to the crater rim of the santorini volcano.
Is the Santorini Volcano Still Active?
Yes, and it surprises a great many visitors who assume the santorini volcano blew itself out in the Bronze Age.
The record. Eruptions have been recorded repeatedly since antiquity, building the Kameni islets in the middle of the caldera. The last one was in 1950, a small event that added to Nea Kameni.
2011 to 2012. A period of unrest with ground inflation and increased seismicity, closely studied and not followed by an eruption.
Early 2025. An intense earthquake swarm in the sea between Santorini and Amorgos prompted precautionary measures and a great deal of international coverage. Scientists linked most of it to tectonic activity rather than to the santorini volcano itself, and life returned to normal.
What that means for a visit. Nothing, in practice. The island receives more than two million people a year, the system is instrumented and monitored, and the authorities publish guidance when anything changes. Check official advice before travelling if there has been recent news, and otherwise treat it as you would any visit to Etna or Vesuvius.
The Minoan Eruption
The eruption of the santorini volcano that made everything else on this island possible.
When. Somewhere between about 1620 and 1600 BC. The exact date is still argued, because radiocarbon dating and the Egyptian historical chronology do not agree, and the argument has run for forty years.
How big. Estimates put the erupted volume at around 60 cubic kilometres, which places it among the largest volcanic events of the last ten thousand years, on the scale of Krakatoa in 1883 and probably larger.
The sequence. Four phases: a tall plinian ash column that dropped metres of pumice across the island; pyroclastic surges; a violently steam-driven phase when seawater broke into the emptied chamber; and finally the collapse of the chamber roof, which dropped the centre of the island into the sea.
The tsunami. Almost certainly, reaching Crete a hundred kilometres south, and it is the most plausible mechanism by which the santorini volcano contributed to the decline of Minoan power.
The evidence. Ash from the eruption has been identified in Greenland ice cores and across the sea floor of the eastern Mediterranean.
The town. Akrotiri was buried under the ash and preserved. No bodies and no jewellery have been found, so the inhabitants left before the end. See Akrotiri.
The Santorini Volcano in Numbers
The caldera. About 12 kilometres by 7, with the water inside the santorini volcano 300 to 400 metres deep.
The cliff. Up to 300 metres, almost vertical, banded in red, black, grey and white.
The island. 76 square kilometres, with a highest point of 567 metres at Profitis Ilias.
The eruption. Around 60 cubic kilometres of erupted material, roughly 3,600 years ago.
Nea Kameni. About 3.4 square kilometres, rising to around 130 metres, and still growing.
The Kameni islets. First appeared above water in the second century BC and have been added to by roughly a dozen eruptions since.
The last eruption. 1950.
Kolumbo. A separate submarine crater about seven kilometres northeast of the island, some 500 metres below the surface, which erupted violently in 1650.
Population at risk. Around 15,500 residents plus more than two million annual visitors, which is why the monitoring matters.
Those figures are the santorini volcano in one page, and they explain the cliff, the black beaches, the wine and the shape of every village on the rim.
Nea Kameni and Palia Kameni
The two islets in the middle of the caldera are the santorini volcano as it exists today.
Palia Kameni. The older one, first emerging in the second century AD, low, dark and largely uninhabited. The warm sulphurous springs are on its shore.
Nea Kameni. The newer and larger, built up through eruptions from 1707 onwards, with the most recent additions in 1950. Black scoria, no vegetation, no shade and no fresh water. This is the santorini volcano at ground level.
The craters. Several, with fumaroles that still steam and ground that is warm to the touch in places. The rock smells faintly of sulphur.
The walk. About thirty minutes up a loose zig-zag path from the landing to the rim, and the same back down. There is a small entrance fee to the geological park.
What it looks like. Not a green island. Black, lunar and completely bare, with the white villages on the cliff two kilometres away and 300 metres above.
Standing on it is the only way to grasp that the santorini volcano is not history but geography.
Kolumbo, the Volcano Nobody Sees
Worth knowing about, because it is the part of the santorini volcano field that scientists watch most closely.
Kolumbo is a submarine crater about seven kilometres northeast of the island, roughly 1,500 metres across, with its floor some 500 metres down. It erupted in 1650 in an event that killed around seventy people on Santorini through ash fall and a tsunami, and it remains hydrothermally active, with vents on the crater floor.
Why it matters. It has its own magma system, separate from the main santorini volcano, and recent research has mapped a body of magma beneath it. That is normal for an active field and is monitored.
Can you see it? No. There is nothing on the surface. Boats pass over it and nothing marks the spot, which is why nobody counts it as part of the santorini volcano.
Why it appears in the news. Because research vessels work there regularly and any paper about magma beneath the Aegean tends to be reported as an imminent threat, which is not what the science says.
Visiting the Santorini Volcano
How you get there. Boats to the santorini volcano leave from the old port below Fira, from Athinios and from Ammoudi below Oia. Most trips are half or full day and combine Nea Kameni with the hot springs and often Thirasia.
How long. Allow four to five hours for the standard trip, of which about an hour is on the islet itself.
The climb. Thirty minutes up loose black scoria, with an ascent of a little over a hundred metres. Not technical, and the santorini volcano is genuinely unpleasant to climb in August heat.
What to take. Closed shoes with grip, a hat, sun cream and more water than you think. There is no shade and nothing to buy on the island.
Cost. Roughly 30 to 45 euros a head for a group boat, plus the small entrance fee to the geological park.
When. The first boat of the day, or a late afternoon departure. Not the middle of the day between June and September.
Season. Boats to the santorini volcano run from roughly April to October and stop for the winter.
Who should skip it. Anyone with mobility problems, small children, or a low tolerance for heat. The santorini volcano is better seen from the rim than climbed if any of those apply.
See Nea Kameni and the full list of tours.
The Hot Springs
Included in almost every santorini volcano trip and consistently the most over-sold part of it.
What they are. Warm sulphurous water seeping into a small bay off Palia Kameni, staining the sea a rusty ochre.
The reality. Boats anchor offshore and you swim in, which means several minutes in cold open water before you reach the warm patch. The water is lukewarm rather than hot, roughly twenty-five to thirty degrees in the warmest spots.
The stain. The iron oxide marks swimwear permanently. Wear something you do not care about.
Worth it? As a curiosity, once. It is not a spa and anyone expecting one is disappointed.
Better. Swim off Thirasia or off the boat in clear water on the far side of the santorini volcano, and treat the springs as the odd bit in the middle.
Seeing the Volcano From Land
The best views of the santorini volcano are free and involve no boat at all.
The rim path. Fira to Firostefani to Imerovigli, level and twenty minutes between each, looking straight down onto the santorini volcano.
Imerovigli. The highest point of the rim, with Skaros Rock in the foreground.
The Akrotiri lighthouse. The whole caldera in profile with both islets in the middle. The best single view on the island and almost nobody goes. See the lighthouse.
Oia castle. The northern end of the crater, and the sunset that everybody comes for.
Profitis Ilias. The monastery at 567 metres, which puts the whole structure into one frame.
The Athinios road. Pull over on the hairpins and read the eruption sequence in the banded cliff face. Every stripe is a separate eruption of the santorini volcano.
Thirasia. The far rim of the santorini volcano, looking back, and the emptiest viewpoint of them all.
The Volcano, Atlantis and the Wine
Two things the santorini volcano is credited with, one shaky and one certain.
Atlantis. Plato described a circular island civilisation that sank in a day and a night, writing around 360 BC. The Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos proposed in 1939 that he was working from a folk memory of this eruption. It is a good hypothesis and not a proven one: Plato’s location and date fit neither the island nor the event. What is certain is that the eruption ended the settlement here and that Minoan Crete never recovered its dominance.
The wine. Entirely certain. The vines grow in aspa, a mix of pumice, ash and pozzolana with almost no organic content, which is why phylloxera never took hold and why the vines are ungrafted with root systems counted in centuries. The salinity and the flinty edge in a glass of Assyrtiko come straight from the volcano. See the wine tour.
And the beaches. Black basalt and scoria at Perissa and Kamari, oxidised iron at Red Beach, pale ash at White Beach and Vlychada. Every colour on this coast is a different volcanic product.
The Volcano and Everyday Life
The eruption is not a historical footnote here. It decides how people build, farm, drink and get about, and once you notice it you see it everywhere.
The houses. The yposkafo, the traditional cave dwelling, is dug horizontally into soft pumice. It needs no timber on an island with almost no trees, it holds about 18 degrees all year, and it can be extended by digging further in. Half the boutique hotels on the caldera are converted ones, and the barrel-vaulted ceiling in your room is the original roof.
The building material. Theran earth, the local pozzolanic ash, sets hard with lime and water. It was quarried in bulk in the nineteenth century and shipped for major works abroad, and the pumice quarries on the north coast are still visible scars.
The water. There are no rivers, no springs worth the name and no aquifer to speak of, because the ground drains instantly. Cisterns collected winter rain for three thousand years and the island now runs on desalination.
The steps. The caldera side is a cliff, so every village on it is a stack of stepped lanes with no road through the middle. That is why the hotels have eighty steps and why nothing here is accessible.
The port. The water inside the crater is 300 to 400 metres deep, which is why cruise ships anchor rather than moor and why passengers arrive by tender at the foot of a cliff.
The earthquakes. The 1956 Amorgos earthquake, around 7.5, destroyed a great deal of the island and emptied villages such as Oia, which had only a few hundred residents by the 1970s. The tourism boom rebuilt them.
Everything a visitor finds charming or difficult about this island traces back to the same event, which is a fair summary of what the santorini volcano actually is.
Monitoring, Risk and Common Sense
Who watches it. The Institute for the Study and Monitoring of the Santorini Volcano, together with Greek university and research institutions, using GPS ground deformation, seismometers, gas measurement and satellite data trained on the santorini volcano.
What they look for. Ground inflation, changes in seismicity, and shifts in the gas coming out of the fumaroles on Nea Kameni.
Warning time. The santorini volcano is of a type that gives signals weeks to months in advance. The 2011 to 2012 unrest was detected, published and discussed openly, and no eruption followed.
Earthquakes. The Aegean is seismically active independently of the santorini volcano. The 2025 swarm between Santorini and Amorgos was largely tectonic and was handled with precautionary measures.
Should it change your plans? No, in normal conditions. Check the Greek civil protection guidance if there has been recent news, and otherwise plan as you would for Naples or Sicily.
The realistic hazards. None of them volcanic. Heat, cliff edges, slippery marble lanes, loose scoria on the crater path and quad bikes on narrow roads account for essentially every incident here.
Mistakes People Make
Climbing it at midday in August. Thirty minutes of loose black rock on the santorini volcano with no shade and no water.
Flip-flops. Scoria is sharp and the path is loose.
Expecting lava. There is none flowing. The santorini volcano is a quiet cone with fumaroles.
Expecting a spa at the hot springs. It is a lukewarm ochre patch you swim to.
Wearing good swimwear. The iron stains it permanently.
Booking it on a cruise stop. The tender and the cable car will not leave time to climb the santorini volcano.
Skipping the geology on the drive up. The banded cliff on the Athinios road is the clearest section through a volcano most people will ever see.
Assuming the caldera is a bay. It is a crater, and the difference is the whole point.
How the Caldera Formed, Step by Step
The shape of the island is a sequence rather than a single event, and it is legible from the road.
Before. A roughly circular island the Greeks called Strongyle, meaning round, built up by earlier eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years. There had been at least four caldera-forming cycles before the famous one.
The magma chamber. A body of gas-rich magma several kilometres beneath the summit, pressurising slowly.
The column. When it vented, a plinian eruption column rose tens of kilometres and dropped pumice across the island to a depth of several metres, which is the white layer you can see at the top of the cliff.
The surges. Ground-hugging flows of hot ash and gas swept outward, laying the grey and pink bands.
The sea. Water broke into the emptied chamber and the eruption turned violently steam-driven, which is what made it so much larger than a dry eruption of the same volume.
The collapse. With the chamber emptied, the roof gave way and the centre of the island dropped, in places by hundreds of metres, and the sea poured in through the northwest gap.
Afterwards. A crescent of cliff, two smaller fragments at Thirasia and Aspronisi, and a flooded crater. The santorini volcano then began rebuilding from the floor, which is what the Kameni islets are.
Every one of those stages is a visible band in the cliff on the drive up from the old port, which makes this the most legible large volcano in Europe.
Santorini Volcano: Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Santorini volcano still active? Yes. The most recent eruption was in 1950 at Nea Kameni, and the system is monitored continuously with GPS, seismometers and gas measurement.
When did Santorini last erupt? In 1950. Before that there were eruptions in 1939 to 1941, 1925 to 1928 and repeatedly since the Kameni islets first appeared.
When was the big eruption? The Minoan eruption, between about 1620 and 1600 BC, which erupted roughly 60 cubic kilometres and collapsed the centre of the island into the sea.
Can you walk on the volcano? Yes. Boats land on Nea Kameni and a thirty-minute climb over loose scoria reaches the crater rim. There is a small park entrance fee.
How long does a volcano trip take? Four to five hours for the standard boat trip including the hot springs, with about an hour on the islet.
How much does it cost? Roughly 30 to 45 euros a head on a group boat, plus the entrance fee.
Is it dangerous to visit? No more than Etna or Vesuvius. The realistic hazards are heat, loose ground and sun rather than eruption.
Are the hot springs worth it? As a curiosity. The water is lukewarm, you swim in from the boat and the iron stains swimwear.
What is Kolumbo? A separate submarine volcano seven kilometres northeast, about 500 metres below the surface, which erupted destructively in 1650 and remains monitored.
Did the eruption destroy the Minoans? It ended the settlement at Akrotiri and probably sent a tsunami to Crete. Minoan Crete declined afterwards rather than vanishing overnight.
Is Santorini really Atlantis? Probably not. It is the most plausible real event behind Plato’s story and neither his location nor his date fits.
Where is the best view of the volcano? The Akrotiri lighthouse for the whole caldera in profile, Imerovigli for the rim, or a boat from the water.
See It From the Water and From the Rim
We are a local operator running private tours and transfers in our own vehicles, and the santorini volcano is the thing most people come to look at without quite realising it.
The version we recommend is both: a boat that lands on Nea Kameni early in the day, and then the lighthouse or Imerovigli in the evening so you can see from land what you climbed in the morning. Akrotiri in between explains what the eruption did.
Prices are per vehicle rather than per person, hotel pickup anywhere on the island is included, we guide in twelve languages, and an 80 EUR deposit confirms a date.
See the personalised tour, the historical tour, or contact us.
Every Village and Site on the Island
Any of these can be built into a private day. 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 · Horse riding · South part tour · Sunset tour · Shore excursion · Caldera tour · Food experience · Wine tour · Historical tour · Small group tour
Planning and services: Famous sights tour · 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
