Santorini is a small group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, 70km north of Crete. The islands form a circular shape around the sunken crater of a volcano, which exploded around 1600 BC. Prior to this time, it was an outpost of the Minoan culture which was based on Crete.

Various hypotheses have been put forward over the years, claiming variously that the explosion of Santorini produced tidal waves and flooding that destroyed Atlantean civilisation on Crete, or that Santorini itself was Atlantis. Neither holds up to modern archaeology, but in the early decades of the 20th century such speculations were rife.