The expression “for a tin of oil” used to be no exaggeration for real estate transactions in Santorini. The remaining elderly locals still clearly remember that in the early 1960s, a collapsed house in Oia was handed over for a symbolic—if not humiliating—price.

Literally, for a large container filled with olive oil, however unimaginable this may seem today, considering that Santorini, “the supermodel of tourist Greece,” according to the Financial Times, is one of the most sought-after real estate jewels in the Mediterranean, with astronomical prices in the local real estate market. On the opposite end of time, a cave house in Oia, covering 200 m², was recently sold.

Its price, according to reports, was around 1 million euros. But beyond its actual value, what’s even more striking is that the building permit includes an additional 500 m², which were miraculously discovered, possibly hidden within the hillside of Oia, as exploiting the provisions regarding cave houses is a common practice. These properties are exempt from building density restrictions.

And this is just one, albeit characteristic, example of the rampant logic that now prevails and drives the frantic exploitation of even the smallest bit of available land on one of the world’s most famous cliffs, on the earthly rim where buildings crowd together along the Santorini Caldera. In Oia, Fira, and Imerovigli, in sync with the overpopulation of tourists (around 2 million arrivals in 2024), buildings of all kinds seem to squeeze in, literally piling on top of each other for a spot facing the volcano and the dreamy sunset of Santorini.

Nevertheless, back in the years following the destruction of the island from the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake in 1956, the “miracle of Santorini” was limited to grief and anxiety, a future that could open up for a heavily wounded place—an island in ruins, with a large portion of its residents emigrating hurriedly. Hundreds of Santorini natives relocated to Syros and Piraeus, or sought their fortune outside Greece. When properties changed hands for a tin of oil, only 200 people remained in Oia.

Today, under the siege of tens of thousands of visitors, some of the permanent residents are rising up, demanding measures to protect the local community, which feels suffocated by the tourist crowds, overtourism, and overdevelopment.

Even up until the late 1970s, Santorini was generally considered a point on the barren line of the Aegean—remote, since it didn’t even have a port for large passenger ships—inhospitable, with very few hotels and low-quality rooms to let, poor. Back then, as a descendant of an “investor” (someone who happened to buy land simply because it was being sold at a nearly negligible price) tells THEMA, “A shop in Oia, with an incredible view, directly across from the volcano, was sold to my uncle for just a few thousand drachmas.”

The port at Ammoudi around the 1920s. Above, the Oia Castle dominates. The photos are from the Santorini Digital Archive collection. We thank Mr. Lefteris Zorgos for his collaboration and the photographic material.

In fact, the seller, a local Santorinian, asked my uncle to leave him his motorbike, a moped he had brought to the island for his commutes. Later, we heard that the Santorinian was bragging in the café about having found a fool from Athens who not only gave him money for a worthless property, but also left on foot because the clever seller had taken the moped. Needless to say, that shop was later sold for hundreds of thousands of euros.”

In the 1960s, in their haste to distance themselves from the land of the trembling nightmare and destruction, with only the thought of leaving behind a black stone on the black volcanic soil of Santorini, many didn’t hesitate to hand over their real estate to the first passerby.

To a fellow local who would stay behind or to a foreigner. To one of those, in any case, who, while all around them they saw nothing but rubble, had the calmness and, most importantly, the foresight to acquire land on the island, seeing in the distance the prospects for development and profit. In other words, they saw what we now know as the modern miracle of Santorini, however it may be defined, with its positive and negative aspects.

The “miracle” of Santorini is reflected, among other things, in some basic numerical data, in certain changes that have been recorded in just the last two decades. For instance, in 2005, there were six 5-star hotels operating in Santorini. By 2023, this number had increased more than tenfold, reaching 69—and continues to multiply since then. In 2005, the total number of beds (both legal and official) was 9,542. By 2023, it had risen to 17,360.

However, this picture is extremely incomplete if the accommodations offered under short-term rentals are not taken into account. These are estimated at 23,000, surpassing the total number of beds in hotel units. Indirectly, these figures confirm that Santorini is characterized by a “mono-culture”—tourism, with perhaps the exception of viticulture and winemaking, which are still part of the tourism sector and connected to it.

Any other source of livelihood was gradually abandoned, as the locals lost interest in various forms of production and processing of local products, concluding that hospitality, and secondarily food service, offered much more generous and easier income than cultivating, for example, tomatoes, fava beans, or extracting Santorini earth, etc.

Donkeys and Lighters

In the 1970s and 1980s, it was news when, for example, Aliki Vougiouklaki vacationed at the “Vedema” hotel in Megalochori, Santorini, one of the oldest and most luxurious on the island. Today, however, it hardly raises any eyebrows to hear about the involvement of Hollywood idol Robert De Niro in a corporate venture that has acquired and manages a luxury hotel in Imerovigli.

In earlier times, 40-50 years ago, during the first phase of Santorini’s tourism boom, the island’s center wasn’t the Caldera, but areas like Kamari, where a form of tourism typical of the Greek mentality was developing — with makeshift rooms to let, tavernas with touts trying to attract customers, and so on.

Kamari in the early 1950s

The profile of Santorini, after all, was shaped by alternative people, intellectuals, those who didn’t seek cosmopolitan glamor or pretentiousness, but rather a destination that suited a hippie mentality, where serenity — or even isolation, away from the standardization of mass tourism — was dominant.

For their part, the locals, even when they enthusiastically embraced tourism, maintained a primitive, somewhat amateurish attitude: even today, many of the Santorini entrepreneurs — hotel owners, restaurant operators, etc. — work with the schedule of the Greek countryside, not the intense pace of a destination that must cater to around 2 million visitors annually.

This perpetuation of a relaxed and leisurely approach, despite the spectacular revenues generated by tourism, is aided by some endemic peculiarities of Santorini. Like, for example, its notoriously inadequate harbor, by modern standards. This harbor has its own historical adventure, as there wasn’t even one until the early 1970s.

By way of a parenthesis, the paradox that one of the most sought-after and frequented destinations in the Mediterranean has as its main sea gateway a port with outdated specifications dates back to the late 19th century: in 1882, an initial design was proposed for a modern harbor, followed by a series of proposals, each in a different location on Santorini.

Eventually, the current port was built in Athinios, and as early as 1994, studies were ordered for relocating the central port to a different location that would provide easy access to cruise ships, larger vessels, etc. It was supposed that work on the new, fully modern Santorini port, located at Monolithos, would begin soon — whatever that means.

For the older lovers of pure, untainted Santorini, before the massification of tourism, the never-ending discussion about the new port can’t help but provoke a smile. Considering the ordeal that anyone visiting the island had to endure in the past.

Because while today there are plenty of routes from Piraeus, including speedboats that reduce the trip to a few hours, until 1972, access to Santorini involved exclusively an 18-hour voyage, the anchoring of the ship offshore, the transfer of passengers by small boats, their disembarkation on land, and their subsequent ride on the backs of patient donkeys. In contrast, although a large portion of incoming tourism still arrives by sea, Santorini’s local airport handled 2.9 million passengers on 23,700 flights — just in 2024.

The Price Explosion

The “miracle” of Santorini, among other things, translates today into accommodation rentals costing 3,000-3,500 euros per night, depending on luxury, the exceptional and exclusive services available, the spaces, the private pool, and, of course, the privileged and uninterrupted view of the volcano.

The view of the, ironically, timeless source of all the island’s woes, but also all of its geophysical blessings. And one must bear in mind that the rise of the “Santorini phenomenon” is relatively recent. Because, until about the mid-80s, Oia and all the other settlements with a view of the Caldera were not in high demand.

Five Stars

The tourist explosion occurred, one could say, with geometric progress, around the turn of the millennium, when Santorini decided it deserved to be upgraded to the level of five-star hospitality, boutique accommodations, gourmet dining, wine tourism, and tastings for refined and demanding palates.

Also, the increasingly frequent investments in retro-modern hospitality units with advanced aesthetics target and attract a crowd with higher economic capabilities. At the same time, however, the island’s basic infrastructure suffers during peak seasons, as the energy, water, and sewage systems, the road network, or even the available space for the crowds that tend to gather at the same time in the same place regularly threaten to blow Santorini’s idyllic magic into the air.

Returning to the matter of prices, the urban legend says that the madness in accommodation charges broke out almost by accident: owners discovered that there were tourists worldwide willing to pay a fortune for Santorini’s famous, unrivaled sunset when they came up with a trick to fool online booking platforms like Booking.com. The goal was to avoid the predictably high commissions taken by online agencies, without cutting off their relationship with the respective platform.

Thus, the entrepreneurs would secretly rent out their suites and rooms privately, away from Booking.com & Co., while the property would appear on the platform as available for booking on the specified dates. The critical point was that, at the last moment, the owners would skyrocket the rental price to amounts that were objectively beyond all reason, say from 200-250 euros per night to 1,000-1,500 euros, or even much higher.

Convinced, of course, that no one would pay such a sum just to pose with the Caldera or the whitewashed picturesque houses perched on the cliff of the Santorini caldera with the volcano in the background. The reality, however, pleasantly surprised the accommodation owners, as their exorbitantly expensive rooms became snatched up. A fact that encouraged the business owners to keep their prices sky-high for as long as possible.

Inevitably, however, the unchecked price surge, at least in top-tier accommodations, has an overall effect on the hospitality sector in Santorini. With the peripheral loss being the workers, seasonal and non-seasonal, who are confronted with the impossible: to reconcile the need and obligation to work on the island, say as new teachers, doctors, nurses, etc., while needing to spend about 3/4 of their salaries on rent.

Which will, in the best case scenario, be a humble “studio” – by name only – without heating and with a monthly rent of about 600 euros. It goes without saying that the deadlock of social housing causes strong discomfort and poses an obstacle to the real development of the island’s true community.

“The Lovers of Summer”

On the planet of Santorini, developments follow parallel tracks, as if they exist in different worlds. At the core of one of these, perhaps the most colorful and strange, lies the now-global frenzy of wedding ceremonies in the Caldera.

Undoubtedly, Santorini’s postcard appearance constitutes a breathtaking landscape of unique and captivating charm, which owes its allure precisely to the sense of danger – from acrophobia that takes your breath away to the thought of what might happen if the Kolumbo volcano suddenly decides to release the lava stirring in its underwater bowels into the atmosphere.

Against this backdrop, for about a decade, the obsession from the Far East with holding grandiose wedding ceremonies in Santorini exploded like an epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of couples, initially from China and Asia, but now also from India or South America, joined their lives in the most theatrical version of the direction orchestrated each time by any of the countless event-planning agencies for this specific type of ceremony.

And so, tourists themselves became a spectacle, in a role reversal with the locals, who watched this peculiar wedding industry “China Love”, with the passing tourists starring in impromptu performances, sometimes with the spectacular – or even utterly kitsch – mixture of Western and Asian standards, in Bollywood style, etc.

However, Santorini excites an irresistible desire in millions of people worldwide. Many of whom wouldn’t let a few thousand euros deprive them of the unique and unparalleled experience of visiting Santorini. This wasn’t always the case, but what is certain is that the once-ruined and marginal Santorini, an island tormented by its very geological existence, for decades inaccessible, and mostly poor, has transformed into one of the most sought-after – and expensive – tourist destinations on the planet.

This transformation, otherwise the modern “miracle of Santorini,” with its positive and negative aspects, with development and excess, with enviable success but also hubris, took place based on two landmark events of completely different natures: a) the terrible earthquake of 7.8 magnitude in 1956 that almost left no stone upon stone on the island, killed dozens of people, and drove away a large portion of its inhabitants. b) Something much lighter and more cheerful – a bit sensual too – namely the worldwide release of the movie “The Lovers of Summer” in 1982.

It was a low-budget film, a secondary product of the American entertainment industry, featuring a trio of young people (two women and one man), exploring the triple romantic attraction between them while vacationing in a small traditional home in the Caldera of Santorini.

Completely unexpectedly, “The Lovers of Summer” became very successful, much of which is attributed to the inspiration of the production team to set the action in Santorini. Millions of viewers were stunned by the previously largely unknown beauty of this volcanic Cycladic island and swore on the spot that they would travel there at the first opportunity and certainly at least once in their lives.

Thus, through a gray advertisement, which no one ever intentionally designed, Santorini became a worldwide love affair of an endless summer. In the same vein, though only for the domestic audience, in the ’90s, singer and songwriter Christos Kyriatzis composed an ode to Santorini, focusing specifically on Imerovigli, creating some additional interest through this Greek hit. Any touch of quaintness, however, isn’t enough to quell the concerns of some of the more sensitive locals about where Santorini is heading.

The Vindication of Karamanlis

In this context, a seasoned architect shares with “THEMA” his concern for the island’s future through a sort of parable: “In 1956, immediately after the destructive earthquake, the then Prime Minister of Greece, Konstantinos Karamanlis, came to Santorini. As he toured the ruins, a woman approached him and said despairingly: ‘What kind of earthquake was this? It’s finished. Santorini is done for.’

Karamanlis replied in a very stern tone, but obviously with affection: ‘No, my dear. This wasn’t an earthquake. It was a baptism for your island,’ meaning that from the rubble, Santorini would be reborn. And so it did in the following years. Karamanlis was vindicated. However, if he saw today how Santorini has turned out, with the incredible illegalities in construction, the orgy of building and urban violations, the farce with the so-called cave houses, etc., I believe he would repeat the phrase: ‘Greece is a vast lunatic asylum.’

Personally, what I fear is the moment when a very strong earthquake will bring the main issue to the surface – the lack of geotechnical studies. The law doesn’t consider them mandatory. So, what is being built today in Santorini is earthquake-resistant, but in the event of strong tremors, the worst scenario is that the buildings will withstand, but the ground beneath them will give way. And then they will fall whole, tumbling like boxes into the ravine, ending up at the bottom of the Caldera.”