Fira

Where it sits. Fira is the capital of Santorini, built along the eastern lip of the caldera about 260 metres directly above the sea, roughly halfway down the island's crescent. From the rim the ground drops in a near-vertical wall of stratified pumice, ash and lava to the old port at Skala, with the volcanic islets of Nea Kameni and Palea Kameni in the middle distance and Therasia closing the view to the north-west. Behind the rim the land slopes gently east toward the airport and the vineyards, so the town has two entirely different faces: a theatrical western edge of terraces and blue domes, and an ordinary Cycladic grid of shops, banks and bus stops a hundred metres inland.

The caldera underfoot. The cliff is a cross-section of the eruption that shaped the Aegean. Around 1600 BC the Minoan eruption ejected tens of cubic kilometres of material, buried the Bronze Age town at Akrotiri under metres of pumice and left the collapsed crater that the sea flooded. The white bands visible below the town are that pumice; the darker layers are earlier flows. The volcano is not finished — Nea Kameni, the black cone in the middle of the bay, was built up by eruptions between 1707 and 1950, and boat trips land there for the walk to the steaming craters. The 1956 Amorgos earthquake, magnitude 7.5, destroyed much of Fira, and a good deal of what looks old was rebuilt after it.

Getting up and down. Three routes connect the rim to the old port, 220 metres below. The cable car, financed by the shipowner Evangelos Nomikos and opened in 1982, runs six cabins on a three-minute ride and is the fastest option, though queues after a cruise tender can be long. The zig-zag donkey path of 587 steps is the historic route and still worked by mules, a practice that has drawn sustained criticism over animal welfare and is now regulated by weight limits. Walking the steps on foot is free, hard on the knees downhill and demanding uphill, and unpleasant in the heat of the afternoon. At the bottom, Skala is a strip of quay with a few tavernas where tenders land.

Museums worth the entry. Fira holds Santorini's two significant collections. The Museum of Prehistoric Thera displays the finds from Akrotiri — wall paintings, painted ceramics, imported Cretan and Egyptian objects, and the small gold ibex figurine discovered there in 1999 in near-perfect condition. The Archaeological Museum covers the later Greek and Roman city of Thera on the mountain to the south-east. Both are within a few minutes of the main square. The Catholic quarter above the town is a survival of the Duchy of Naxos and later Venetian rule, with the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, a Dominican convent and the Lazarist buildings that now house the Megaro Gyzi cultural centre, whose photographic archive of the 1956 earthquake is the best record of it anywhere.

On screen. Santorini's cliff towns supply the opening act of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, the 2003 sequel directed by Jan de Bont, in which an earthquake off the island exposes Alexander the Great's Luna Temple; the production spent six days shooting on the island before moving to Hong Kong, north Wales, Kenya and soundstages in Britain where the temple interiors were built. The island also carried the Greek half of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which began filming here in May 2004, with most of its village work in Oia and Ammoudi at the northern tip. Fira's role in both is the caldera itself — the wall of white houses on a black cliff that no set can reproduce.

Eating, drinking and walking out. The rim between Fira and Firostefani carries the best of the restaurants, and the island's wine deserves attention: Santorini's ungrafted assyrtiko vines are trained into low basket shapes called kouloura to shelter the fruit from the wind, producing a bone-dry, high-acid white with a protected designation, plus the sun-dried sweet vinsanto. Several wineries on the road to Pyrgos and Megalochori receive visitors. The signature walk starts here: the caldera rim path north through Firostefani and Imerovigli, past the rock of Skaros with its ruined Venetian castle, and on to Oia, about ten kilometres and three to four hours, best done early with a bus back.

Getting there and timing. The island's airport is six kilometres east, with year-round Athens flights and summer routes across Europe; ferries dock at Athinios, eight kilometres south-west of Fira, where buses and taxis meet arrivals. Fira is the hub of the island bus network, with services to Oia, Perissa, Kamari, Akrotiri and the port. April, May, late September and October give comfortable temperatures and thinner crowds; July and August are hot, expensive and heavily booked, and the rim is uncomfortably busy on multi-ship days.