This Santorini Gem Tops the List of World’s Most Beautiful Villages

The village of Oia on the Greek island of Santorini has topped the list of the world’s most beautiful villages, Uswitch reported on Tuesday.

Uswitch data from across social media to determine which scenic villages were the favorites amongst visitors. Analyzing Instagram hashtags and Pinterest pins, the site found that Oia was by far the most popular village in the entire world.

Oia had a total of 1,612,671 social media posts, over 300,000 posts more than the number two spot on the list, the village of Goreme, Turkey– that difference alone would be enough to take the number five spot on the list.

These numbers indicate that Oia is in a league of its own amongst the breathtaking village of the world. Oia’s post-ability can definitely be attirbuted to its breathtaking views across the south Aegean Sea, where the island’s architecture is beautifully displayed across the volcanic island of Santorini.

While Santorini is clearly one of the most sought after vacations on the planet, Uswatch also reports that its charms have convinced many to settle in the village–at least semi-permanently– as enquiries into village properties grow by 126% each year.

Santorini is no stranger to topping lists for world class attractions. The Greek island was recently crowned by the travel website “Bounce” as the destination with the most beautiful sunset in the world.

The website’s travel experts made an extensive study of many international destinations that are famous for their spectacular sunsets, in an attempt to categorize them and create a list based on objective criteria.

Santorini ranks top in the world for scenic villages and sunsets

The study that was conducted by Bounce’s experts looked at the total number of travel articles and blogs which recommend each destination.

Additionally, the number of Instagram posts and the level of pollution caused by artificial light in each area were among the factors looked at in the study.

By quantifying these parameters, they managed to give them a sunset score from 1 to 10, where the higher the number, the better the result for that destination is.

The Greek island of Santorini managed to get a score of 8.29/10, something that made her the queen of all sunset destinations!

”The destination that stood out more than any other was the Greek island of Santorini, which is thought by many to be the most beautiful of the country’s many small islands, known for its towering cliffs and whitewashed houses on the shore of the Aegean Sea,” the Bounce writers noted.

”Santorini was recommended in far more articles than any of the other destinations that we looked at and also doesn’t suffer from light pollution like major cities, with a brightness of 0.627 mcd/m2,” the website stated.