Good Friday in Pyrgos, Santorini: Why You Shouldn’t Miss the Fire and Brimstone
The Santorini sunset from Franco’s Cafe perched near the top of Pyrgos
Why You Must Go to Pyrgos if You are in Santorini for Easter Weekend
Imagine a small town perched atop the highest hill on Santorini, with the classic white Cycladic style houses and labyrinthine walkways covering the top half of the peak like icing on a cake, a blue domed white church looking down over the town, and the ruins of a Venetian castle at its crest. Now imagine that same normally quiet and sleepy inland town with at least 2000 flaming tin cans filled with homemade fire starters made of wax and sawdust lining every wall and the rim of every roof crackling and dancing in the gusty Mediterranean wind. Add in several thousand people packed into the tiny walkways, a processional, constantly ringing church bells, and a band playing Greek Orthodox religious music and you have Good Friday in Pyrgos.
The cans filled with sawdust and wax lining the roofs ready to be lit
When we realized that we were going to be in Greece for Easter, we knew we were in for a treat. Easter is the most important religious holiday in Greece, unlike in America where Christmas tends to be the bigger celebration. As we walked the streets of Rethymno on Good Friday and Holy Saturday and then explored Heraklion on Easter Sunday, however, we didn’t see any of the celebrations we had read about. It was oddly quiet. It wasn’t until we arrived in Santorini that we realized that Greek Easter falls on a different weekend, as the Greeks follow the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar. We were determined not to miss the festivities the second time around, so we got the Easter beta from a friendly shop owner in Thira. He filled us in on the details of the Good Friday celebration in Pyrgos and we began planning our evening there.
The flaming cans after being lit with a blowtorch
Many Greek towns have a funeral procession on the eve of Good Friday to symbolize the funeral procession for Jesus. The mood is generally somber and then becomes celebratory on Saturday at Midnight when everyone gathers in the churches, lights homemade candles, and the fireworks ensue. Pyrgos, however, has taken the funeral procession a step further and, instead of holding candles and walking through town, they have a band of young men running along the walls and roofs of the town lighting homemade fires with blow torches to symbolize the funeral procession.
This was an unforgettable experience. If you happen to be in Greece for Greek Easter, I would highly recommend adding this to your itinerary. Given that the spring is such a perfect time to be in Greece in general, you might even plan your trip around this unique celebration. All that being said, this event was difficult to pull off well with kids. Seeing this amazing ritual was well worth it, but there were several logistical issues that made attendance difficult.
The only way in and the only way out for thousands of people in a town on fire
The logistical difficulties of Good Friday in Pyrgos:
The town is not big enough and doesn’t have the facilities to accommodate this many people. This means that restaurants are full. There is no parking. Buses will fill up immediately. Traffic in and out is jammed and the walkways are so filled with people trying to get in and out at the peak times that they resemble a cattle stockade.
The public transportation in Santorini is horribly unreliable and insufficient. This event needs buses lined up outside the town to transport people back and forth to Thira instead of the one bus running every 30 minutes. Getting transportation out of Pyrgos is a nightmare.
From what we can tell, after wandering the labyrinth of this town for a full hour looking for a second way out, there is only one narrow walkway in and out. This resulted in my worst COVID nightmare of people packed so tightly into the narrow walkway that no one could move. I refused to pack my family into such quarters, especially with flames flaring all around us. As a result, we searched every alley, explored every dead end, climbed every crumbly castle wall, until we finally listened to Bailey and returned to the top of the castle ruins where we found a partially caved in staircase to climb down and make our way out of the village via a completely empty and hidden back alley. This made for a great adventure, but I would not recommend this strategy to anyone else.
Now that I know better, here are my recommended strategies for how to pull this off:
Option 1:
Make a reservation in advance at one of the restaurants around 6:30 so that you will be finishing up with dinner when the festivities begin. This will allow you to get to town before the biggest part of the crowd arrives. You can get to the town by bus, by car (although I am not sure what the parking situation will be like), or by taxi. Alternatively, we combined the evening in Pyrgos with the afternoon in Megalochori and walked from Megalochori to Pyrgos on a footpath and small dirt roads (see separate post on this walk for more details).
The kids enjoying their drinks at Franco’s Cafe before the fire started
If you forget to make a reservation in advance, like we did, there are several restaurants that are “first come first served”. If you are planning to eat at one of these (Rosemary’s and Franco’s cafe are the two that we found), I suggest arriving at 6:00 to get a table before the rush. We arrived at Franco’s cafe, which is perched atop the hill and an amazing place to watch the sunset and the festivities, at 6:15 PM. All of the tables were already full, but we were first in line. After about 5 minutes, we snagged a perfect table for 5 and spent a leisurely 2 hours having small plates, desserts, and drinks while we watched the sunset and waited for the festivities to begin. Within 15 minutes of sitting down, however, a line started to form and it became impossible to get a table since everyone was settled in for the festivities and in no hurry to give up their convenient vantage point.
Us enjoying the sun at Franco’s Cafe before it got cold as the sunset
Option 2:
Arrive well after the fire lighting, around 10:00 PM or after. If you want to avoid the crowds entirely and don’t care about seeing the whole event come alive, you can see the town lit up at any point after the lighting. From our Airbnb in Firostefani 3 miles away, we could see the mountain lit up well into the night. A few people were arriving as we left at 9:45 PM. This would be the least hassle and you could wander the streets and explore the firelit magic without the crowds.
Option 3:
Stay in Pyrgos. If you don’t mind being in a quiet little town, you could plan on spending part of your stay in Santorini there and using those days to explore the southern part of the island. The town is very cute and there are a few options for lodging there. Just be aware that it was completely dead at 5:00 PM when we arrived and there may only be a few restaurants and shops open this early in the season.
One of the many people rapidly lighting the cans throughout the city with a blowtorch
How to get out of Pyrgos on Good Friday?
Option 1:
After you have finished dinner, go ahead and walk out through the narrow alley leading down through the town and watch the lighting from below. I thought we needed to see the lighting from the highest vantage point possible, but it actually looked more impressive from a lower elevation. With this strategy, you will avoid the horrifying bottle neck of people trying to squeeze through the archway.
The view of Pyrgos from the bottom of the city beyond the bottleneck tunnel
Option 2:
Watch the lighting from above (I suggest finding a spot on the castle ruins for this strategy) for 5 to 10 minutes and then immediately make your way out through the narrow arch to observe the rest from below. This strategy is the riskiest, since I don’t know for sure when the mad dash to leave begins. It was well underway when we attempted to leave at 9:15.
The view of Pyrgos from above at the ruins of the castle
Option 3:
Wait it out. If your kids are cool staying up late, find a nice spot and just wait for everyone to clear out. You can also wander the labyrinthine maze lit up with fire during this time as everyone else packs into the exit. If I had it to do again, this would have been my strategy; however, this strategy requires PRE-PLANNING your transportation home. We were hoping to catch the bus home and thus frantically trying to find a way out in time to catch the bus which departed at 9:30. We did not, in fact, make it out in time and had to resort to plan B and then plan C.
Pyrgos as seen from our AirBnB in Firostefani, still burning hours after the sun has set
Transportation out of Pyrgos
Do not plan on taking the bus! I knew this was going to be difficult to pull off, but I did not know that it was going to be impossible. The buses in Santorini are confusing and unreliable in general. If you look at the schedule online, look at schedules on other travel blog posts, look at the schedule at the main bus terminal in Thira, and then look at the schedule posted at the bus stops, they are all different. I’m not joking, literally, no two are the same. As a result, you never know when a bus will arrive in Santorini. In addition, some buses stop at the smaller terminals along the route to the main destination and some don’t and there is no way that I can find to figure out which ones will stop and when. The bus from Perissa sometimes stops in Pyrgos and we were hoping to catch the last bus from Perissa at 9:30, but either missed it, or maybe it didn’t stop. I still don’t know. Our back-up plan was to walk to Exo Gonia nearby and catch the bus coming back from Kamari (which was supposed to run until 10:30). When we got to the bus stop in Exo Gonia, it was dark and deserted. We finally saw a bus heading to Kamari at 10:30, but it did not stop. Before we could find out if it would have stopped on the way back to Thira, a taxi driver saw us standing on the side of the road with our 3 kids at 10:35 PM and pulled over. He told us that the bus would not stop. I’m still not sure if that was the truth or if he was just trying to get our money, but, for 25 Euros, I wasn’t willing to risk being stranded with the kids at 10:40 if the bus didn’t stop. He was willing to let us cram 4 people in the back and we were home safe and sound in 10 minutes. It was worth every bit of 25 Euros at that point.
So, if this is what not to do, how should you get home from Pyrgos on Good Friday?
Option 1:
Hire a driver in advance and designate a planned meeting point for pick up. Our Airbnb host helped arrange a driver for us a couple other times and this would be my strategy if I had a do-over. Just be aware that it will take you a while to get out of town and combine this strategy with Option 1 or 3 above. Combining this one with Option 2 would be risky because you won’t know exactly how long it will take you to get out.
Option 2:
Drive. This was the most commonly employed strategy but you will have to find parking, navigate the confusing little streets, and will likely find yourself in a traffic jam at some point. If you combine this with Option 1 above, it might work out well. If combined with Option 2, you would run the risk of hitting some traffic but it should be ok. This would also work well with Option 3 if you come late enough to let the traffic clear out.
Option 3:
Stay the night in Pyrgos.
Gus enjoying the heat and the light emanating from the thousands of cans on fire
Final tips:
Make a reservation in advance if you want to eat there.
Either arrive early (before 6:00) or late (after 10:00).
Don’t plan on taking the bus out of Pyrgos.
Consider watching the lighting from below rather than above.
Bring plenty of layers. The temperature drops dramatically in Santorini this time of year and we were all in sweaters and windbreakers with our hoods pulled up by the time of the lighting. It got substantially warmer after the fires were lit, which is a good indication of just how much fire we are talking about.
Consider staying the night in Pyrgos and avoiding all of the transportation madness.
I hope this article helps make this unforgettable experience as smooth as possible. If you have any additional insight and tips that I missed, share in the comments below. Additionally, if you have any insight into the insanity of the bus system in Santorini, please enlighten me!
The boys playing with the wax and fire at the Pyrgos Castle
