Museum · Fira, South Aegean
Museum of Prehistoric Thera
The Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira, Santorini, shows finds from the island's prehistory, mostly from the Bronze Age town at Akrotiri, including its wall paintings.
0 km in a straight line
Greece•Island
Santorini
Santorini, known in antiquity as Thera, is an island at the southern end of the Cyclades in Greece; Greece's national tourism organisation also uses the name for the island group of Thera, Thirasia, Aspronisi, Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni, and this destination is the island of Thera itself. XTOUR maps the Bronze Age town at Akrotiri, Ancient Thera, the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira and the medieval castles of Skaros and Oia on the island.
Country
Greece
Type
Island
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Worth the drive
Places to see near Santorini
Distances are straight-line, not driving time — mountain roads in this region are often twice as long as the map suggests.
Archaeological site · South Aegean
Skaros Castle, Santorini
The ruins of the medieval castle of Skaros stand on the cape of Skaros on the caldera coast of Santorini; the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades calls the castle the first Venetian capital of Thera.
2 km in a straight line
Archaeological site · Kamari, South Aegean
Ancient Thera
Ancient Thera is the archaeological site of the ancient city of Thera on the top of Mesa Vouno, the hill on the southeastern cape of Santorini, founded in the 8th century BC.
7 km in a straight line
Fortress · Oia, South Aegean
Castle of Oia (Kasteli of Agios Nikolaos), Santorini
The Castle of Agios Nikolaos, known as the Kasteli of Oia, is the ruined medieval castle at the northwestern tip of Santorini, in Oia.
7 km in a straight line
Archaeological site · Akrotiri, South Aegean
Akrotiri (prehistoric settlement), Santorini
Akrotiri is the excavated Bronze Age town on the southwestern coast of Santorini, near the modern village of the same name, buried by the island's volcanic eruption in the Late Bronze Age.
7 km in a straight line
Archaeological site · Naxos town (Chora), South Aegean
Portara, Naxos
The Portara is the standing marble gateway of an unfinished temple of Apollo begun in 530 BC on the islet of Palatia at the entrance to Naxos harbour; this record is the temple site and its gate.
77 km in a straight line
Explore deeper
Guides to Santorini
8 guides
Travel Guide01
Akrotiri or Ancient Thera: Santorini's two archaeological sites compared
Akrotiri is a Bronze Age town buried by Santorini's eruption; Ancient Thera is a city founded centuries later on the Mesa Vouno ridge, and Hellenic Heritage announced that Ancient Thera would be closed from 27 June 2026 until further notice. This guide compares the two sites, says which museums in Fira and Athens hold their finds, and sets out where the official pages disagree.
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Travel Guide02
Santorini or Thira? Oia, Fira and the island's names explained
Santorini and Thera are two names for the same island, but Thira is also the name of a municipality, a municipal unit, a community and a regional unit, and Wikidata gives it as another name for Fira. This explainer sorts out which Thira is meant, how Oia and Fira fit in, and where the official pages tell different stories about the names.
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Useful from Santorini
Travel Guide01
Choosing a Greek island: Santorini, Mykonos, Crete or Corfu
Santorini, Mykonos, Crete and Corfu are four very different kinds of place, and XTOUR records each differently: two islands, two cities on Crete and one town on Corfu. This guide compares what XTOUR maps on each, what Greece's official tourism and heritage pages say about them, and where a site lies outside the destination it is planned from.
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Travel Guide02
Greece travel guide: choosing mainland and island bases
XTOUR plans Greece around towns and islands rather than regions: Athens, Thessaloniki, Kalambaka, Delphi, Nafplio, Ioannina, Heraklion, Chania, Santorini, Mykonos, Rhodes and Corfu Town. This guide says what each base is for, which sites are reached from a base rather than inside it, and which XTOUR guide takes over for each of them.
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Travel Guide03
Greek letters on signs, and why Greek places have several spellings
Greek road and street signs are written in the Greek alphabet, with a Latin-letter line where appropriate, and the official romanization is the Greek standard ELOT 743. This article shows how the letters convert, why one town can appear as Kalambaka, Kalampaka or Kalabaka and one city as Heraklion, Iraklion or Irakleio, and where the official sources disagree.
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Travel Guide04
Greek food guide: feta, Kalamata, Chios mastic and what PDO and PGI mean
Greece has 121 food names registered as PDO or PGI in the EU register, from Feta and Kalamata olives to Santorini fava and Chios mastic, and 15 protected spirit names, Ouzo among them. This guide explains what the labels require, what the register's own documents say about the best-known names, and which dishes Greece's tourism board lists for each island group.
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Travel Guide05
Greek island groups explained: the Cyclades, Dodecanese, Ionian and five more
The Greek National Tourism Organisation sorts the islands into eight groups, from the Argosaronic islands off Athens to Crete, and lists which islands belong to each. This explainer sets out those lists, where the groups overlap or disagree with Greece's administrative regions, and which XTOUR destinations sit in which group.
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Travel Guide06
Greek wine guide: what Santorini, Naoussa, Nemea and other wine names protect
Greece has 33 wine names registered in the EU as PDOs and 114 as PGIs, and each comes with a technical file that fixes its area, its grapes and the kinds of wine it covers. This guide reads those files for Santorini, Naoussa, Nemea, Mantinia, Samos, Robola of Kefalonia and Candia on Crete, and explains what the island-wide and Retsina names are.
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Destination information last verified: October 9, 2026
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