Akrotiri Archaeological Site

How to Complete

4 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. 📜 1

   Walk Streets a Civilization Left Behind 3,600 Years Ago

   history $

   📍 WHERE: Akrotiri Archaeological Site, Akrotiri village, southern Santorini. GPS: 36.3508°N, 25.4022°E. Entry €20 at the gate; look for the large modern steel-and-glass protective roof at the edge of the village.

   💡 WHAT: You're standing inside a Bronze Age city that has been sealed in volcanic pumice since roughly 1627–1600 BC — over three and a half millennia. Akrotiri isn't a ruin. It's a preserved city: multi-story buildings up to three floors high, paved streets, a drainage system, frescoes on the walls. Pompeii was buried in 79 AD. Akrotiri was buried 1,600 years before that. Here's what nobody tells you: NO human remains have ever been found here. Not a single skeleton in 57 years of excavation. The Akrotirians heard the earthquakes coming — days, maybe weeks before the eruption — took their valuables, and walked away. They expected to come back. The wine presses, the storage jars, the painted walls — all abandoned alive. The man who found this city, Spyridon Marinatos, started digging in 1967. He died at the site in 1974, suffered a skull fracture in a fall while directing excavations. He is buried here. As you walk the site, find the memorial near the entrance.

   🎯 HOW: The walkway system takes 60–90 minutes at a steady pace. Focus on Building Xeste 3 (the most intact, with fresco outlines still visible), the Telchines Road (main street — notice the paving stones laid 3,600 years ago), and the open storage areas where pithoi still stand in place. Download the free Akrotiri audio guide app before arriving — it overlays the visible buildings with reconstructions. Arrive at opening time (08:00 summer) — the site is cool, the light is low, and you'll have the streets to yourself.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the site is in one of its periodic structural-inspection closures, the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira (Step 4) preserves the full context. Confirm site status at +30 2286081939 or hhticket.gr before making the trip south.

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2. 📜 2

   Find the Wine Press Where Minoan Hands Trod the Harvest

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: Within the Akrotiri site, in the area identified as Trench 58B on excavation maps. Look for the storage zone where large pithoi (terracotta storage jars) stand in rows. Your site guide or audio guide will identify the storage buildings.

   💡 WHAT: Archaeologists in Trench 58B found the actual winemaking installation — a treading vat connected by a spout to a collecting pithos below. Minoan feet trod grapes in the upper vat. Grape juice ran down through the spout. Wine filled the jar beneath. This is not a metaphor. This is wine production equipment on this island, frozen in place since approximately 1627 BC. The pithoi you see standing upright in the storage areas — each standardized to hold 14–18 litres — held the wine, olive oil, and grain this city traded with the rest of the Aegean. Wine was recorded in Linear A inscriptions on the containers themselves: units of liquid measure, quantities tallied. This is where Santorini wine began. The Assyrtiko you'll taste at Estate Argyros is the direct descendant, grown in the ash of the same eruption that sealed these jars.

   🎯 HOW: Ask your guide specifically: 'Can you show me the wine storage area and the treading installation?' The site guards speak enough English to point you toward the pithoi zones. Look for the large round-bottomed jars still standing in ground hollows — that's how they were stored, embedded in the earth for stability. Count them. Dozens of jars. This was a city that produced and stored wine at industrial scale, 3,500 years before the first Santorini PDO.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the trench 58B area isn't accessible on a given day (excavation work continues), the Museum of Prehistoric Thera (Step 4) displays original pithoi from the excavation alongside photographs of the wine press installation in context.

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3. 🍷 3

   Taste the Wine Still Grown in Minoan Ash at Estate Argyros

   wine $$

   📍 WHERE: Estate Argyros, Episkopi Gonia, Thira 847 00 Santorini — 5.5km southeast of Fira. Call +30 2286031489 or email info@estateargyros.com to book. GPS: ~36.393°N, 25.450°E.

   💡 WHAT: Estate Argyros is the largest single vineyard owner on Santorini — 120+ hectares, founded in 1903 by Georgios Argyros. The oldest parcels of the estate have rootstocks that are over 200 years old. Not 200-year-old vines — 200-year-old root systems. The vine above the ground may have been renewed five or six times over the centuries, but the root beneath has been drinking from Santorini's volcanic pumice since before the Napoleonic Wars. Those roots are ungrafted — own-rooted — because the volcanic soil here contains no clay, and phylloxera (the louse that destroyed nearly every European vineyard in the 1860s–1880s) needs clay to survive. Santorini is one of the only wine regions on Earth where vines grow on their original roots. When you taste the Estate Argyros Assyrtiko, you are tasting a grape that may share genetic ancestry with what the Minoans pressed in Trench 58B — grown in the ash of the same eruption that buried their city. Three and a half millennia of unbroken viticulture on one volcanic island.

   🎯 HOW: Book the 90-minute experience (€40/person) — seven wines plus local food — and ask for the Monsignori Cuvée specifically. It comes from the oldest vines on the estate. On arrival, ask your host: 'How old are the vines in the Monsignori parcels?' The answer will make you look at the glass differently. The tasting room has ocean views. Drink slowly.

   🔄 BACKUP: If Argyros is fully booked, Gaia Wines (east coast, Perivolia, GPS ~36.384°N, 25.483°E) offers Thalassitis Assyrtiko from vines in the Akrotiri and Episkopi vineyards — the same ground — at €8–15 per tasting. Open May–October, Tue–Sun 12:00–20:00.

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4. 📜 4

   Hold the Gold Ibex That Survived the Eruption of the Ancient World

   history $

   📍 WHERE: Museum of Prehistoric Thera, Mitropoleos & Dekigala Streets, Fira, Santorini 847 00. GPS: 36.4185°N, 25.4370°E. Entry €10. Phone: +30 2286025405. Walk from Fira's central square — 5 minutes.

   💡 WHAT: In 1999, excavators working at Akrotiri found a small wooden box inside a clay chest. Inside: a hollow gold figurine of an ibex — a wild mountain goat — made using the lost-wax technique, dating to the 17th century BC. It is the only significant gold object ever found at Akrotiri. Recall: no human remains. Only one piece of gold. The theory? Someone hid it before the evacuation — a votive offering, a divine gift left for the gods of a city they were abandoning. It has been sitting in this museum since its discovery, 3,600 years after whoever placed it in that wooden box walked out of the city for the last time. Also in the museum: the replica of the Boxing Children fresco (the original is in Athens, but this reproduction lets you stand close enough to see that the boxer on the left wears earrings, bracelets, anklets, and a necklace — a champion dressed for glory), and the original pithoi from the excavation, still with their standardized proportions. The site shows you the buildings. This museum shows you what lived inside them.

   🎯 HOW: Enter and turn right — the gold ibex is in the main Akrotiri display hall. Stand with it for at least five minutes. Read the label carefully — 17th century BC means this object is older than the Trojan War. Then find the fresco replicas and the storage vessels. Budget 45–60 minutes. The museum is small but dense — do not rush. Buy the museum catalog at the gift shop (€8–12); it contains the best photographs of the frescoes and full excavation context.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the museum is closed (Tuesdays, or off-season November–March), the Archaeological Museum of Thera (also in Fira) holds geometric-period finds from the island. For fresco originals, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens houses the Boxing Children, Blue Monkeys, Spring Fresco, and Ship Fresco.

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Insider Tips

• ✦

  Covered site means it's good on hot days

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  Wine vessels visible in situ

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  The frescoes are in Athens — replicas here

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  Combine with Red Beach nearby