The cliffside caldera rooms of Santorini earn their fame — and their sunsets — one whitewashed terrace at a time.
Rooms carved into the cliff
The best places to stay in Oia and Imerovigli are cave houses cut into the volcanic rock, cool in the heat and blindingly white against the blue. A private terrace with a plunge pool is the local currency; the view down the caldera to the sea is the same one that sells a thousand postcards, only this time it is yours before breakfast.
Book the terrace facing west and you have bought a front-row seat to the most over-photographed and still genuinely astonishing sunset in the Aegean.
Beyond the sunset
- Walk the caldera path from Fira to Oia early, before the cruise crowds land.
- A boat out to the hot springs and the red-sand beach at Akrotiri.
- Dinner of grilled octopus and Assyrtiko, the island's mineral white wine.
Santorini is busiest at its edges and quietest just after dawn. Stay two nights, wake early, and you will meet the island the guidebooks promise before everyone else arrives to share it.
