Santorini
— — a half-island left where a volcano used to be.
Not only on a wall.
“The caldera is the shape of the volcano that isn't there anymore. The Minoan eruption emptied the centre of the island roughly thirty-six hundred years ago, and the white villages of Fira, Oia, and Imerovigli sit along the rim where the cliff drops. The sea below is six hundred metres deep in places. The sunsets at Oia draw a crowd by the hour. The bell towers still ring on the half hour.
Santorini, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Santorini, called Thira in Greek, is the southernmost of the Cyclades, about two hundred kilometres southeast of Athens. The island is the rim of a submerged caldera left by the Minoan eruption around 1600 BCE, one of the largest volcanic events of human history. The main villages of Fira and Oia line the western cliff at roughly two hundred and fifty metres above the sea. The population sits near fifteen thousand permanent residents. The Akrotiri Bronze Age site was buried by the same eruption and preserved beneath ash.
The cliff is volcanic rock, layered red, black, and white in horizontal bands that tell the eruption history. The villages are built into the rim in white-washed cube houses, blue-domed churches, and barrel-vaulted skafta cut into the soft pumice. The caldera drops over three hundred metres from Fira to the water, and the sea below reaches depths of four hundred metres. The ferry port at Athinios is reached by a switchback road of eight hairpin turns from the rim above.
Oia faces northwest along the caldera rim, which is why its sunset has its reputation. The sun goes down directly across the open water of the Aegean with the cliff and the white village in silhouette. The light arrives flat and gold about an hour before, then turns rose, then violet, and the cliff bands turn dark in sequence. The viewing terrace at the old castle fills early in summer. The blue domes hold the last light longer than anything else in the village.