Santorini was a small volcanic island in the Aegean Sea, home to Akrotiri, a Late Bronze Age outpost of Minoan civilization, which preceded ancient Greece.

That popular theory posits that in referring to the natural disaster that destroyed Atlantis, Plato was actually describing the catastrophe that wiped out Minoan civilization.

In the first phase of this the Minoan civilization attains its acme, and the succeeding style already shows much that may be described as rococo.