Santorini
Sitting on the terrace of a cliffside cafe, taking in the skybox view of Santorini’s bowl-shaped caldera over breakfast, I was almost certain that I’d found Atlantis. Plato’s city, before its catastrophic end, had been built atop concentric rings of land and water. Santorini’s broken-doughnut shape, created by a huge volcanic explosion that spewed ash from Egypt to Turkey around 1600 B.C., is essentially a bull's-eye with a tiny island at the center. This compelling cataclysm-and-circles evidence has made Santorini the only Atlantis candidate sanctioned by otherwise skeptical establishment academics. (Jacques Cousteau once filmed a documentary here titled “Calypso’s Search for Atlantis.”) The island’s extraordinary natural beauty also happens to have established its reputation among travelers as the Platonic ideal of a Greek island.
Like many island dwellers, George Nomikos, a gregarious restaurateur who agreed to serve as my guide, saw his home as the center of the universe and wanted me to see every inch of it. From the town of Fira we followed winding roads cut through the thick volcanic tephra that covers Santorini’s ring like frosting on a Bundt cake. We visited red, white and black sand beaches — which echoed Plato’s description of Atlantis’s buildings constructed from red, white and black stone — and dormant vineyards and fields, where the island’s volcanic soil nurtures its famous white wine grapes and cherry tomatoes. After crossing twice through Mr. Nomikos’s adorable home village, Megalochori, where he enthusiastically slowed down to shout “Kalimera!” (“Good morning!”) to assorted friends and cousins, we turned north and traced the upper curve of the island’s ring to the town of Oia, with its whitewashed homes and glorious blue-domed roofs perched on the rim of the caldera. It’s one of the most photographed spots in the world and, incredibly, even more beautiful in person.
Mr. Nomikos, who seemed to know every single person on Santorini, had arranged for his friend Dimitris Chamalidis to circle us around the caldera in his speedboat. As we approached Nea Kameni, the young (and still growing) volcanic island at the caldera’s center, the deep blue waters turned Kelly green from sulfur. “You can smell now, like a bad egg,” Mr. Chamalidis said, biting down on a cigarette and scrunching his nose. We returned to port and waited for what I’d been told was the world’s greatest sunset. It did not disappoint.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of Atlantis evidence on Santorini is Akrotiri, an archaeological site that reopened to visitors in 2012 after several years following a roof collapse. Akrotiri had been a thriving port town until the explosion 3,600 years ago. Today, it’s like a smaller Pompeii, but better maintained. One extraordinary fresco, in which a fleet of ships voyage between two prosperous maritime cities, has been interpreted by some as a snapshot of Plato’s Atlantis.
FRANCE
Black Sea
ITALY
TURKEY
SPAIN
GREECE
Doñana National Park
Tyrrhenian
Sea
Ionian
Sea
Santorini
Alboran
Sea
Malta
Gibraltar
TUNISIA
MOROCCO
ALGERIA
EGYPT
LIBYA
I mentioned the idea to Christos Doumas, chief archaeologist at Akrotiri since 1974, seven years after its discovery, when Mr. Nomikos and I met him for a late dinner at the Cave of Nikolas, a restaurant outside the ruins that overlooks the Sea of Crete. Mr. Doumas had hardly sat down when the chef, a white-haired matron in a black dress, came out to smother him with affection. “She was the cook on our famous dig here in 1967,” he explained after the hugs and kisses. “She was 14 years old.”
I was eager to ply Mr. Doumas with my theories about Atlantis, but as Mr. Nomikos ordered glasses of the local pink-hued vin santo, the archaeologist shook his head dismissively and told me I was, indeed, on a fool’s errand. “Atlantis is a utopia,” he said. “A word that in Greek means ‘no place.’ It’s a dream.”
Was it, though? After a few weeks of detective work, I wasn’t so sure. Everything Plato wrote — including the story of Atlantis — underscored his conviction that the purpose of life was to search for truth. I’d just have to keep looking, no matter how many beaches I needed to visit, no matter how much grilled octopus I needed to eat. I told Mr. Nomikos I was headed to Athens next to examine possible Atlantis clues at the Acropolis.
“Mark, this is very serious, you need a plan,” he said, taking my pen. “Let me give you the name of a good souvlaki place,” he continued, and motioned for the waiter to bring another round of wine.
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