Castle of Oia

This guide to the Castle of Oia in Santorini follows the Venetian fortress raised here by 1480 to watch for corsairs, who worked this coast not for plunder but to kidnap young men and women for Mediterranean slave markets. It traces the noble Dargent family who held the castle for roughly a century, claiming descent from a Byzantine emperor, and the Ottoman assault of 1577 that forced their choice between surrender and flight toward Syria. Most evenings a crowd gathers on these same stones for sunset, with no idea what the tower below their feet once watched for.