Thira vs. Santorini
 

This may sound silly but what is Thira vs. Santorini. Is it a city in Santorini, is it another name for the island. I am just a little confused.

I believe it is another name for the island.

It is another name for the island, but it is also the name of an ancient Greco-Roman town whose ruins are up on one of the mountain tops.

From another website:

"Ancient Thera, the Classical city of the island is located on Mesa Vouno, 396 m. above sea level. It was founded in the 9th century B.C. by Dorian colonists whose leader was Theras, and continued to be inhabited until the early Byzantine period".

I believe this is where the island got it's original name of Thera, also spelled Thira.

Thanks for the precision, Brotherleelove.

Still, I think I did pretty well for something I only saw once - in 1971!

I think Thira stayed in my memory because I almost got blown off the narrow ridge that leads up to it.

Acrotiri had only just been discovered then. I was able to visit it when some of the frescoes that are now in Athens (or have they since been moved back to Santorini?) were still in situ.

Much of the important artifacts from Akrotiri have been removed to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, but there are still some in the small museum in Fira.

My first visit to the island was in 1985. It must have been so quiet and natural in 1971!

I don't think you would have recognized it in 1971. There was not a single jewelry shop in all of Fira. The only shop - there must have been others - that I remember was a wine shop into which an elderly Greek invited me to taste a sweet wine. I stayed at the Atlantis, which was practically the only hotel in town at that time; it was quite beautiful. (I stayed there again in 1994; it had gone downhill.) And the difference between 1971 and 1994 in the whole of Fira - wall-to-wall jewelry shops - almost gave me a stroke.

I'm not sure there were any hotels at all in Oia then.

I'm rather glad I went to Greece several times in the early to mid-70s; after the 1994 trip, I no longer have any wish to return, as much as I admire and love classical Greek sculpture and architecture (and perhaps even more, archaic Greek sculpture).

What a fantastic place it must have been then!