Santorini’s extraordinary beauty of sun brushed blue seas and whitewashed villages is best seen from the 980 foot high cliffs above the main town, Fira, looking out to the shattered crescent-shaped remains remains of the volcanic caldera. Without doubt it is the highlight of any tour in the Aegean.
Wikipedia tells us “The huge Minoan eruption of Santorini in the 17th century BC may have inspired the legend of Atlantis. It was rated 7, the highest score for a historical eruption, in the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program’s Volcanic Explosivity Index”.
The current Santorini caldera, formed about 3600 years ago during the Minoan eruption, measures about 12 by 7 km (7.5 by 4.3 mi), with 300 m (980 ft) high steep cliffs on three sides, and is the second largest in the world after that of Lake Taupo in New Zealand. Taupo’s was the world’s largest known eruption over the past 70,000 years, ejecting altogether 1170 cubic kilometres of material and causing several hundred square kilometres of surrounding land to collapse and form the caldera.
That looks like a tough climb from sea level (where I presume you arrived). what’s the altitude gain, about 100 m?
A 980 foot climb Karl! We walked down but took the cable car back up! The trip up from the new port area is now in a regular bus but is still quite an alarming ride up!