Behind Oia's postcard domes lies a hard history: a Venetian castle, a merchant fleet of 130 ships, and the 1956 earthquake that emptied the village. Add Akrotiri's Bronze Age streets and three days become a walk through 3,600 years.
The Bronze Age town buried by the c.1600 BC eruption, sheltered under a bioclimatic roof since 2012. Two- and three-storey houses, drainage pipes and frescoed walls survive along Telchines Street. Open 08:30–20:00 summer, €15 full, €8 reduced.
Founded by Dorian settlers around the 9th century BC and excavated by Baron Hiller von Gaertringen from 1896. The ridge holds an agora, a theatre, Ptolemaic garrison quarters and rock-cut inscriptions dated to the 8th century BC. Closed Tuesdays.
Holds the finds Akrotiri itself cannot display: the gold ibex figurine found in 1999, the Blue Monkeys and Spring frescoes, and Cycladic marble figurines. Chronology runs from the late Neolithic to the eruption layer. Open 08:30–15:30.
Oia's Venetian-era castle, one of five kastelia on Santorini, built as a defensive settlement whose outer houses formed the wall. The 1956 quake toppled most of it; the surviving arch, cistern and lookout show how 500 people once sheltered inside.
Housed in a restored 19th-century captain's mansion on Nikolaou Nomikou, it documents the era when Oia owned some 130 sailing ships trading Russian grain from Odessa. Figureheads, sextants, ship models and crew ledgers fill six rooms. Closed Tuesdays.
Oia's main church stands on the main square only because the 1956 earthquake destroyed its original home inside the Kasteli. The congregation rebuilt lower down; the carved iconostasis and the icon of the Virgin were carried out of the ruins.
The barrel-vaulted houses dug straight into the pumice cliff below the main lane were the crews' quarters, while captains lived in neoclassical mansions above — a class map cut into rock. Many stood abandoned from 1956 until restoration in the 1980s.
Two restored stone windmills at the village's western tip ground barley for Oia's households until electricity arrived. Their thick round bases and conical roofs are the standard Cycladic design; both were rebuilt after the 1956 quake damage.
The farming settlement 1 km east of Oia, where vine-growers and labourers lived while shipowners built on the rim. Its lanes hold canava wine caves, the 19th-century church of Agios Matthaios and quake-damaged houses left as they fell.
Working vineyard in the plain below Oia growing Assyrtiko in the kouloura basket-weave method, a training system developed centuries ago against the meltemi wind. Tastings explain phylloxera-free ungrafted vines, some over 200 years old.
An eight-metre-deep natural cave, dug from 1870 and used as a working winery until 1952, now traces island viticulture from 1660 onwards with tools, presses and reconstructed cellars. Audio guide in 22 languages; open daily 09:00–19:00.
The second port below Oia, reached by 300 steps, where the village's wooden sailing ships were built and repaired on the shingle. Slipway grooves and boat-shed arches remain, along with the small chapel of Agios Nikolaos that blessed launches.