The city of Thera evolved into the island’s administrative, religious and commercial center, with public buildings, markets, baths, temples and churches, neighborhoods of private residences, a theater, water reservoirs, a sewage system and an excellent road network. Its buildings were defined by their simple yet graceful lines.

The quantity and provenance of the imported products discovered in excavations show that Thera had commercial ties and was linked as far back as the 8th century BC with all the major urban centers of the time, from Corinth and mainland Greece, to the islands of the Northern Aegean, the Cyclades and Crete, all the way to Cyprus and North Africa. It was, in fact, one of the first places to adopt the Phoenician alphabet as the basis of Greek writing. Its decline began in the late 3rd century AD as it became safer and more comfortable for residents to live near the island’s seaports of Oia and Ancient Eleusis.

“In the late 7th and 8th centuries, Arab raids rendered life on the coast dangerous and makeshift settlements began to form in the hills once more.
A short time later, however, Ancient Thera was abandoned for good,” notes Efstathiou. The city luckily did not disappear into the annals of history, as numerous traces of its past remained always visible and the testimonies of travelers have kept its memory alive.

German-led excavations in the 19th century and Greek ones after that have revealed a good part of the ancient city, and the archaeological site today gives visitors a feel of its pulse. The picture comes together with a visit to the Archaeological Museum of Fira, which contains some of the most significant finds from the site, such as statues and votive offerings, and decorative and utilitarian objects – souvenirs of lives whose true stories we may never know.