Christiana ( el, Χριστιανά) is a group of three volcanic

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...

s in the

Cyclades The Cyclades (; el, Κυκλάδες, ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The name ...

. The group is located about 16 km (10 miles) southwest of

Santorini Santorini ( el, Σαντορίνη, ), officially Thira ( Greek: Θήρα ) and classical Greek Thera (English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from the Greek mainland. It is t ...

and is made up of the islands Christiani (Χριστιανή, the largest one), Eschati (Εσχάτη) and Askania (Ασκανιά) belonging to the same submarine volcanic edifice, which is assumed to have been dormant since the Early

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

. J. Preine, J. Karstens, C. Hübscher, P. Nomikou, F. Schmid, G.J. Crutchley, T.H. Druitt and D. Papanikolaou "Spatio-temporal evolution of the Christiana-Santorini-Kolumbo volcanic field, Aegean Sea", Geology, 2021. The island's area is about 2.35 km². All three islands are now uninhabited but on Christiani there are remains of human settlement dating back to

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

times. Christiana islands have been uninhabited since the 1890s and have remained unfarmed since then. As a result, artificial pesticides and fertilizers are absent from this ecosystem. In the mid 1970s, the largest island, Christiani, was considered by NATO as a military base intended to host a missile silo, but this never came to pass. These islands are privately owned and public access is restricted.

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Islands of Greece Cyclades Islands of the South Aegean Private islands of Greece {{SouthAegean-geo-stub

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