Oia Santorini Landscape, Greece

Oia is the village at the northwestern tip of Santorini, strung for almost two kilometres along the rim of the volcanic caldera, about 11 km north of Fira. The caldera was formed by the Minoan eruption around 3,600 years ago, and its cliffs drop more than 300 metres to the sea. Oia’s white cube houses, cave dwellings dug into the pumice, blue-domed churches and windmills make it the most photographed village on the island.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Oia was a prosperous sea captains’ village whose ships traded from Alexandria to Russia. The captains’ neoclassical mansions still stand in the upper part of the village, while sailors lived in simpler cave houses, called yposkafa, on the cliff edge. The 1956 Amorgos earthquake badly damaged Oia, and from 1976 it was restored under a Greek National Tourism Organisation programme for traditional settlements. Today many cave houses are hotels with terraces and plunge pools, and one captain’s mansion holds the Naval Maritime Museum.

Visitor Information

Walking around Oia is free. The main street, Nikolaou Nomikou, is a car-free lane lined with shops, galleries and cafés that leads to the ruins of the Venetian castle of Agios Nikolaos at the western tip, the classic sunset viewpoint. Sunset is around 20:40 in late June and around 17:10 in December, and in summer the castle and the lanes around it fill up an hour or more beforehand. For quieter streets and better photos, come early in the morning.

About 300 steps lead down from Oia to Ammoudi Bay, a small port with a few fish tavernas and a pebble beach, and Armeni Bay below the village to the south is a departure point for excursion boats. The caldera trail from Fira to Oia, about 10 km through Firostefani and Imerovigli, takes three to four hours on foot; it has little shade, so start early and carry water.

Oia is about 25–30 minutes by taxi or car from Santorini Airport and about 45 minutes from the ferry port of Athinios. KTEL buses run via the bus station in Fira, where you change: buses from Fira to Oia leave at least every 30 minutes for most of the day and cost €2.20, the same as the airport bus, while Fira to Athinios costs €2.70. Parking at the edge of the village is limited and the roads are busy on summer evenings, so arrive well before sunset or come by bus.