Santorini

Santorini was born of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, an Aegean Pompeii event that hollowed out the island's southern half and left behind the 300-metre cliffs of today's caldera. Three and a half thousand years later, the villages of Fira and Oia cling to the rim like sugar-cubes on a slate, their cubic houses, blue domes and infinity terraces hanging over the deepest blue water in the Mediterranean. Add black- and red-sand beaches, volcanic vineyards producing the famously mineral assyrtiko white wine and the prehistoric site of Akrotiri, and Santorini reveals itself as a far more layered island than its Instagram reputation suggests. The sunset over Oia remains one of the most coveted spectacles in all of Greece.

For first-time visitors, Santorini is essentially a love letter to the Cyclades in concentrated form. You can walk the spectacular Fira-to-Oia cliff path before breakfast, swim off black volcanic sand at Perissa by lunchtime, and finish the day with a glass of Assyrtiko on a caldera-edge terrace as the sky turns crimson. Returning travellers find a quieter Santorini in the inland villages — Pyrgos, Megalochori, Emporio — where Cycladic life still runs on grandmother time and ouzo is poured by people who remember the island before tourism. Yes, Santorini is busy, expensive and best avoided in peak August. But come in May, June or September, and you'll understand why it sits on so many travellers' once-in-a-lifetime lists.