STORY

The original lime kiln you see today as a feature of Kamini Villa, was originally built by the owners’ forefathers nearly 200 years ago.

On inheriting the property the present owners decided to lovingly restore the lime kiln structure and incorporate it into the villa design, preserving the heritage of Santorini island.

For thousands of years humans have used lime, foundations made of lime have been found in turkey dating back from 14,000 years ago! Lime was used in building mortars, and is easily produced by heating limestone. Lime kilns were used for the calcination of limestone to produce the form of lime called quicklime.

The lime kilns on Santorini were made from local stone and the limestone was layered with wood or coal and lit, and it burnt the lime, which was taken from the bottom of the kiln, through a hole. Kamini Villa you see today was formally one of these working limekilns and Kamini in Greek means ‘fire’.

On Santorini the people used lime for building, plastering and the whitewashing of their dwellings, so lime was in high demand. That is why today there are several ruins of kilns around the countryside of the island. Usually, they were built near areas where there was a suitable rock (limestone) so to cut down on transportation.

They would stockpile local wood, especially small trees like holly because of their high heat on burning. Once they found the correct location and had a stock pile of wood the digging of the kaminolakko would begin [2 meters depth]. Into this was placed the lime stones, and above this was carefully made the dome of stones, the actual kiln. This took great skill and only the local stone craftsmen could do it. Then took place the layering of lime stones and wood, and finally the furnace was lit.

The process took about 2-3 days and needed constant wood onto the fire. When the material was baked at a temperature of 800-1000 degrees Celsius, limestone (calcium carbonate) lost its carbon dioxide and converted to lime (calcium oxide). At the end of the process the lime was left for 10 days left to cool, and then began the transfer of lime in sacks with donkeys down the slopes to the villages. It is said that a successful calciner, could produce 12 to 15 tons of lime.