Island
Insula Stira
Santorin
Listen to the story
Faint letters, the opening S barely visible yet not in doubt, mark Insula Stira, the volcanic island of Thera in the Cyclades, now Santorini in Greece. A colossal Bronze Age eruption blew out the heart of the volcano, the sea flooded into the crater, and a town at Akrotiri lay buried with its wall paintings, preserved in astonishing number. Dorian settlers from Laconia later made the island their home and, around 630 BC, sent out the colonists who founded Cyrene. In Roman times new islets rose in the crater and vanished again.