EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Santorini poster, drawn from the real map

36.3932°N / 25.4615°E · Greece

This is not a bay: it is what remains of a round island whose centre collapsed. The crescent and the small island facing it close the circle.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Santorini poster
What the map shows

A broken ring, and two islets that came after

The shape reads at once, which is rare for a geological figure. The main island makes an arc opening widely to the west; the island to the north-west continues that arc with the same curvature and the same steep edge turned inward. Between them, two breaches, and through those breaches the sea came in. The inner edge is regular, almost drawn with compasses; the outer edge is irregular and falls away in a gentle slope to the east. That asymmetry is the whole story, and you can see it without being told.

Read on

Two reservations, because they matter. That inner edge is a cliff three hundred metres high, and our background has no relief: the inner sea is a flat wash with no vertical edge, and it is for the text to give you the height. Then the villages: they hold the top of the cliff in a continuous thread, and on the map that thread is very thin, a simple thickening of the streets along the edge. It does not disappear, but it does not assert itself either, and too soft an ink would erase it. The two islets at the centre, by contrast, read clearly, pale land set on water: they are the next chapter of the story.

Compose your own

What suits Santorini

The palette

A pale island on water that surrounds it and enters it: this is the simplest contrast in the whole series, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than complicated. A deep water ink and a very pale land give the cleanest shape, and here the shape is the entire subject. One precaution, and it is a real one: the thread of villages along the inner edge is very fine, so keep a frank street ink, or the island becomes an empty silhouette and you lose the only trace of habitation on the sheet.

The framing

Portrait, the ring in the middle and water all round. The frame has to hold both islands together, the large one and the one to the north-west: separated, they become two ordinary islands and the circle no longer closes in the eye. That is what forbids coming any closer, even though the villages would gain by it. To the south-east, the plain and its runway can leave without loss: it is the one flat place, and the least eloquent.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. The name of a village on the edge, the name of a boat, the year of a summer: on an island looked at from above, the caption is what reminds you that you were there.

The sheet
Subject
Santorini, Greece
Palette
Bleu de coupole
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Overlay
Typeface
Cursive
Framing
Zoom 10.6
Fade at the edges
15%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Bleu de coupole

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the island

17th c. BCA town buried like Pompeii

Akrotiri, at the south-western tip, was one of the principal ports and urban centres of the Aegean, a settlement of some twenty hectares. Its inhabitants abandoned it under earthquakes, and then the eruption of the last quarter of the seventeenth century BC buried it, as Pompeii would be buried far later. The Greek Ministry of Culture holds to that archaeological dating; physical measurements give a window of 1627 to 1600. The debate is not settled and this page does not settle it.

1600 BCThe centre of the island collapsed

The eruption known as Minoan collapsed the centre of the island. The hollow you can see inside the ring is three to four hundred metres deep, for an ejected volume estimated between forty-eight and eighty-six cubic kilometres. That is why the inner edge is regular and the outer one is not: one is a break, the other a flank. The two islets in the middle are later than the collapse, and they are still growing.

1967Excavation has been going on since 1967

Systematic excavation at Akrotiri began in 1967 under Spyridon Marinatos, who died on site in 1974, and continues under Christos Doumas. The site is at the south-western tip of the arc, under a roof that has no shape at all on a map. People come to Santorini for its cliff edge; what made its scholarly reputation is at the other end, flat, and invisible here.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Santorini

The village on the edge where you stayed, the crossing to the islets, the way down to the harbour at the foot of the cliff. The ring is the same for everyone. The place on the edge you looked from is not.

Compose my Santorini poster