Famous poets and novelists have been inspired by Santorini. George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Elias Venezis, I. M. Panagiotopoulos, Tassos Athanassiadis and others have described this unique place in their unique way.
The island has also inspired important painters such as Nikolaos Hadjikyriakos-Gikas, Paris Prekas, Petros Zoumboulakis, Christophoros Asimis, Zoe Alafouzou, Mark Venios, Anna Mendrinou, Diana Antonakatou.
Its settlements have been studied and admired by architects such as Le Corbusier, Savvas Kontaratos, Ioannis Kovanoudis and others.
From previous centuries up to today, Santorini has been captured in photos and videos by thousands of people. Those of the team that accompanied the German archeologist and baron Hiller von Gaertringen (from 1895- 1905) the famous photographer Nelly (Nelly Sougioutzoglou-Seraidari) who visited the island for vacations and her photos were the only to picture Santorini before the 1956 earthquake, to name a few. Also photographer George Ioakeimidis, who recorded on glass plates the landscapes before the 1956 earthquake and before the 1925 and 1949-1950 eruptions. Robert A. McCabe devoted pages for Santorini in his album of Greece titled “The years of innocence” (1954-1965). The list goes on and includes many famous and modern photographers.
Santorini will never stop being a source of inspiration. Perpetually changing, grand, and imperious, it challenges every generation to use its own means and aesthetics in order to confront a phenomenon way above human measures. And it will remain unpredictable and untamed forever.

Extracts from poems & novels

ODYSSEAS ELYTIS
Sea-wakened, proud,
You lifted up your stone breast
Speckled with the southwind’s inspiration
For pain to inscribe its very heart there
For hope to inscribe its very heart there
With fire with lava with smoke
With words that concert the infinite
You gave birth to the voice of day…

…You emerged from the innards of the thunderpeal
shuddering amid repentant clouds…
(Orientations)

Even so, that same light, sparkling, overwhelming, persistent, tat refutes Greece in the afternoons, restores it again during sunset, under the dusk’s splendid fireworks…
(Ta Mikra Epsilon)

YANNIS RITSOS
The salt, the sun and the water are slowly eating away at the houses. In the place where windows and people used to stand, what will remain one day will be soaked rocks and a statue with its face in the dirt. The doors travel in the sea alone, rigid, unusual, clumsy…
(Chtipimata, Testimonies A)

GIORGOS SEFERIS
We found ourselves naked on the pumice stone
watching the rising islands
watching the red islands sink
into their sleep, into our sleep…
…the islands – rust and ash – are sinking

ELIAS VENEZIS
We head towards Merovigli, this autumn day, awash with light. The white church belfries – their lines exquisite, harmonious – stand out next to the naked, ruined windmills. I reflect upon this harmony, the wise instinct that first bloomed in the hearts of simple island craftsmen to become tradition and legacy, bequeathed from generation to generation. How their buildings are all in the measure of man. Here, the human instinct has subdued nature, the wild form created by the volcano, the sinking of half the island to the seabed. Instinct did not follow nature, took nothing of its colossal and wild character. Here, the art of man followed once more the Greek law, subdued forces, taught measure and harmony.

I.M. PANAGIOTOPOULOS
It is unbelievable how much kindness, how much Peace there is on the land of Santorini, the island shaped and ruled by the wrath of demons… Santorini is part of the peculiarities, the idiosyncrasies, the paradoxes of the Greek land. It is another world, with its own rhythm, its own sense. A world that, more than many other Greek worlds, lives always in fear of the inevitable.
The other Cycladic islands are more or less peaceful, made in a lyrical mood. Santorini is made by the spirit of tragedy, a very sequestered, angry spirit. It is a remote, secluded and lonely Island; it is in the Cyclades. A recluse, one of those true, pure ones that passionately loved the loneliness bringing them closer to the spirit of God, beyond men and human passions.

NIKOLAOS HADJIKYRIAKOS-GIKAS
Lines stretched like fiddlesticks, following the course of the arrow, through extended parallelograms, cubes, cylinders, cupolas, curves, slightly diffracted lines, combined into a composition of such dramatic intensity that balance is achieved only by miracle. Here, no order is enforced among chaos; disarray seems to rule instead. Consider that this pristine architectural achievement is the work of unknown craftsmen.

MARIOS PLORITIS
…Gazing at the amphibian giant that is the volcano,
overlooking the huge ring of the caldera,
feeling its black sand and the off-white aspes,
you get the impression that you are witnessing the creation of the world….
…Two faced and beautiful, wild and tame, Santorini is and remains magical –a fairy that enchants you, softening and forever holding you captive with her charms…

SPYROS POTAMIANOS
Did you ever imagine that the black and fiery throne of the Devil stands on a Greek island?
Well, seeing is believing.
“The devil’s island” – that’s what travellers of yore used to call Santorini as they sailed with their frigates and their galleys through its exotic bay.
Even today, when reaching the bottomless bay of Santorini by ship, visitors admit that what they see justifies this medieval name. Indeed, only the Devil could set his throne on this infernal place.

VASILIS ALEXAKIS
I never had the opportunity to see the world from so high up anywhere else in miniature. The boats resembled my toys, people measured not more than a centimeter… Santorini poked fun at reality, revealed how little weight it had…