THIRA ON SANTORINI
Original Limited Edition Serigraph
My trip up to Thira on a donkey
The city of Thira on Santorini, is an active volcanic island in the southern Aegean Sea, and probably the only volcano in the world whose crater is in the sea. Thought to be the fabled Atlantis, Cousteau looked for the lost city of Atlantis here on crescent-shaped Santorini. Destroyed by the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history that created a tsunami 300 foot high that lead to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on Crete. Santorini, one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea, was devastated by a volcanic eruption in the 16th century B.C.E., forever shaping its rugged landscape and villages. The whitewashed, cubist houses cling to cliffs above an underwater caldera (crater), overlook the clear Aegean and beaches made up of black, red and white lava pebbles
Santorini came into existence as a result of intensive volcanic activity; twelve huge eruptions occurred, one every 20,000 years approximately, and each violent eruption caused the collapse of the volcano’s central part creating a large crater (caldera). The volcano, however, managed to recreate itself over and over again.
The last big eruption occurred 3,600 years ago (during the Minoan Age), when igneous material (mainly ash, pumice and lava stones) covered the three islands (Thíra, Thirassiá and Asproníssi). The eruption destroyed the thriving local prehistoric civilization, evidence of which was found during the excavations of a settlement at Akrotíri. The solid material and gases emerging from the volcano’s interior created a huge “vacuum” underneath, causing the collapse of the central part and the creation of an enormous “pot” –today’s Caldera– with a size of 8x4 km and a depth of up to 400m below sea level.
The eruption of the submarine volcano Kolúmbo, located 6.5 km. NE of Santorini, on 27th September 1650, was actually the largest recorded in Eastern Mediterranean during the past millennium! The most recent volcanic activity on the island occurred in 1950. The whole island is actually a huge natural geological/volcanological museum where you can observe a wide range of geological structures and forms!
