Its official name is Thera, but Santorini, a contraction of Santa Irini from its Latin Empire days, is how it’s known to tourists worldwide. To romantics drawn to legend, it bears yet another name, one tied to a cataclysmic volcanic eruption some 3,600 years ago: Atlantis, the lost island. Two million years of volcanic activity created a round-top island of lava rock embracing three limestone mountain peaks created eons before the Aegean existed as a sea. Evidence of pottery from approximately six thousand years ago put the first settlers on the island in Neolithic times, and archaeological excavations at the prehistoric city of Akrotiri unearthed a prosperous, developed civilization in residence in the mid-sixteenth century BCE, at the height of the Minoan Civilization. That’s when literally all hell broke loose, destroying everyone who’d not fled a prefatory warning earthquake, in likely the most catastrophic volcanic eruption in recorded history.
