Located in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200km southeast of Greece's mainland, Santorini, classically Thera, and officially Thira, is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago which bears the same name. It is essentially what remained after an enormous volcanic eruption (which occurred some 3600 years ago) that destroyed the earliest settlements on a formerly single island, and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110km to the south, through a gigantic tsunami. A giant central, rectangular lagoon, which measures about 12 by 7km, is surrounded by 300m high, steep cliffs on three sides.
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