Firostefani Central Square

This guide to Firostefani Central Square in Santorini opens with a puzzle: how a church dated to 1807 ends up standing in a square where almost nothing else looks older than the twentieth century. It traces the answer back to a devastating 1956 earthquake that reshaped this stretch of the Aegean, and to the islanders who rebuilt the square stone by stone without architects or grand plans. The blue-domed church at its edge, Agios Gerasimos, kept its old outline even as its walls were entirely remade.