Hiking Trails

There is a moment, as you climb the stone steps from the small harbor stairway toward Manolas, when your breath catches — and not only from the climb. Below you, the caldera opens in all its grandeur, free of the hotels, bars, and crowds of the opposite shore. Here, on Thirasia, the landscape remains as generations before you knew it: bare, volcanic, authentic.

The caldera path: Manolas – Riva

The island’s most iconic route begins in Manolas, the capital built on the edge of the cliff, and descends toward Riva, the small harbor at the foot of the caldera. The steps are carved into the rock itself, winding between whitewashed walls and cave houses that once sheltered entire families. Walking slowly, you feel the change in elevation drawing you closer to the blue of the sea, while the sound of your footsteps is, for most of the day, the only sound around you.

Land born of fire and sea

The geomorphology here is not merely a backdrop — it is the island’s very narrative. Thirasia broke away from Santorini after the great volcanic eruption of the late Bronze Age, and has since remained a fragment of the same shattered ring around the caldera. As you make your way along the paths, you can trace the successive layers of pumice and volcanic ash in the slopes, their colors shifting from gray to red to black. It is like reading the earth’s history with your feet.

Toward Potamos and Agrilia

Turn inland and the landscape changes character. The route from Manolas to Potamos and Agrilia crosses terraces planted with low-pruned vines, cultivated in the traditional Cycladic manner to withstand wind and drought. Here the pace is gentler, the land quieter, and the small, scattered settlements seem almost untouched by time. The dry-stone walls that mark the fields are the work of decades of patience, built stone upon stone by people who knew all too well how harsh this land could be.

Paths of memory

The passages linking Thirasia’s settlements were not carved out for walkers; for centuries, they were the only way for residents, animals, and goods to move between the harbor and the villages and back. Walking them today, you literally follow in the footsteps of those who lived here before you, in a place that resisted mass tourism precisely because it remained hard to reach. That very inaccessibility became, in the end, its most precious trait.

Thirasia shows you nothing in haste. It lets you discover it, step by step.Traditional local saying about the island

Leaving Thirasia’s trails behind, you carry more than tired legs: the sense of having seen Santorini as it was before it became a symbol, before it became a destination. And that memory, itself carved into the stone, does not fade easily.