Lake Voulismeni began life with an unfortunate nickname: Vromolimni, the stinking lake. Its water sat stagnant until 1870, when a small canal linked it to the sea, and the name it carries today probably descends from that first, less flattering one.

Locals call it bottomless, a title it holds in legend rather than in fact. One theory insists it connects underground to the Santorini volcano, more than 100 kilometres away, a notion boosted by reports of odd goings-on here after Santorini’s 1956 eruption. Each year, international cliff divers leap from platforms above its shore.

VoiceMap’s self-guided walking tour of Agios Nikolaos leads you here from the marina, using the lake to unpick the town’s story: a Resistance-era lawyer’s statue on the waterfront, streets named for Cretan poets, and the 1940 “Oxi” that gave a shopping street its name.