Santorini

Santorini is the image most people carry of Greece before they ever arrive: white houses, blue domes and a sunset that silences a whole village. What the photographs cannot show is the scale of the caldera itself, a sea filled crater so vast that ferries look like toys crossing it. Standing on the rim for the first time is a moment travellers remember for years.

The island rewards those who look past the famous viewpoints. Pyrgos climbs a hill inland with hardly a crowd in sight, Megalochori hides courtyards behind high walls, and the ancient site of Akrotiri preserves a Bronze Age town buried by the eruption that shaped everything here. Down at the shore, the Red Beach and the black sands of Perissa and Kamari show the volcano's work in colour.

Then there is the wine. Vines have grown in Santorini's volcanic soil for millennia, woven into low baskets against the summer wind, and the Assyrtiko they produce is dry, mineral and unmistakably of this place. An afternoon moving between cliffside wineries, glass in hand, is as essential to the island as any sunset.

With our local team, Santorini works the way it should: a suite on the quiet side of the caldera, a table booked before the sunset crowd arrives, a private catamaran that leaves the busy ports behind. You arrive, and the island's best hours are already arranged around you.