Ports in Greece
° Corfu ° Katakolon ° Mykonos ° Piraeus
° Santorini
Greece has a history stretching back more than 4.000 years and inhabitants
of Greece and her islands have been sea-faring people. The people
of the mainland, called Hellenes, organised great naval and military
expeditions, and explored the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, going
as far as the Atlantic Ocean and the Caucasus Mountains. One of
those expeditions, the siege of Troy, is narrated in the first great
European literary work, Homer's Iliad. Numerous Greek settlements
were founded throughout the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and the coast
of North Africa as a result of travels in search of new markets.
The Cyclades
The islands of the Cyclades comprise one of the most enchanting
parts of Greece, and Santorini may be the most beautiful and dynamic
of those islands with its 51,146 square miles.
The earliest traders in this region were the Minoans; their base
was the island of Crete and they travelled and traded throughout
the Mediterranean. The Minoans constructed huge, intricately designed
palaces with polychrome pottery, indoor plumbing, and brightly coldored
wall paintings. Because the Minoan written language has not been
deciphered, they remain a mysterious race, yet they set the stage
for what we call the "Classical Greek" age.
Santorini
Centuries ago Santorini—then called Thera—was shaped
like a cone, but that cone was a volcano. Sometime before 1450 B.C.,
Thera erupted and the island is now shaped like a fishhook. Scientists
belive that a tidal wave may have resulted from the eruption and
destroyed Minoan cities along the northern coast of Crete. (The
last eruption was in 1948; Santorini is on the same fault line as
Stromboli, Vesuvia and Etna.)
After the eruption, the island was repopulated and recovered quickly.
Egyptians used the sheltered harbor as a forward base for their
fleet of galleys. There are also many remnants of Roman buildings
and early Christian churches. The current name of teh isladncomes
from its patroness, Saint Irene of Thessalonika, who died there
in 304. The Venetians called her sant'Irini, and the name stuck.
Before the Turks evicted the Venetian navy, the Venetians controlled
Santorini and the other Cyclades for more than 300 years and established
commercial and trade relations with most of the islands and cities
of Greece.
During the Hellenistic period, Thera, because of its central position
in the Aegean, became an important trade centre and a important
naval base, due to its strategically perfect position. Between 1200
AC and 1579 AC, the island was under Byzantine and Venetian reign,
and from 1579 to1821 AC fell under the Turkish occupation until
the Greek Revolution and independence.
Because of the constant changes and to control temperature, houses
were built into cliffs so that they were virtually unseen from the
sea. Traditional Santorini houses are carved into the mountainside.
Because of the lack of water on the island, containers were built
under the house to collect rainwater. Those houses, many of which
started in the 1700s, are now much in demand. They are beautiful
blues and whites (quite like the colors on this page) and are rented
as summer houses to tourists.
Reading departure signs in some big airport