CAVO TAGOO Santorini – 13 rooms, caldera views, and a floating breakfast in Imerovigli

Santorini has approximately ten thousand hotels and every single one of them claims to have the best caldera view. Most of them are lying, or at least exaggerating. CAVO TAGOO Santorini is not lying. Thirteen suites on the northern edge of Imerovigli – the highest point on the caldera rim, about 300 meters above sea level – with views that look directly across the volcanic crater to the open Aegean. Every suite has either a hot tub or a private pool on the terrace. The infinity pool has floating sun loungers. There’s a floating breakfast service. The sister property in Mykonos has two million Instagram followers. This one has 400,000, which for 13 rooms is an insane ratio.

The July 2024 stay is in the CAVO TAGOO Suite with Pool – 41 sqm, private pool on the terrace, caldera view – at 2,310 EUR / $2,540 USD including tax. For a two-night minimum at a 13-room property in peak Santorini season with this view, that’s the honest market rate. The vlog covers everything: the room in detail, the walk to Imerovigli village, sunset on the floating lounger, dinner at ROKA, the floating breakfast, Fira walking preview, and Santo Wines winery. Let’s go through it properly.

Why Imerovigli over Oia or Fira

This question comes up every time someone plans a Santorini trip and the answer genuinely matters for understanding why CAVO TAGOO’s location is its primary asset.

Oia is the famous sunset village – the one in every photo, with the blue domes and the cliff-side restaurants. It’s beautiful and it’s absolutely mobbed. The sunset crowd in Oia in July is several thousand people standing shoulder to shoulder on a narrow caldera path. The sunsets are real. The experience is a rugby scrum.

Fira is the capital – busiest town on the island, most restaurants and bars, most accessible, most crowded. Good as a base for exploring, less good as an atmospheric experience.

Imerovigli sits between them at the highest point of the caldera rim – what the locals call the Balcony to the Aegean, about 300 meters above sea level. Quieter than both. The caldera views are arguably better than Oia because the elevation is higher. The sunset is the same sun. The walk to Oia along the caldera path is doable if you want it. The village has cobblestone alleys, blue-domed churches, whitewashed houses, and a fraction of Oia’s tourist density.

CAVO TAGOO sits at the northern edge of Imerovigli, which puts it above the village and slightly removed from even the village foot traffic. The location is covered at 00:55 in the vlog and the approach makes the caldera position immediately apparent. You’re on the lip of a volcano. The Aegean is directly below. Oia is visible in the distance. This is the view.

Arrival, entrance and reception

Access from the vlog: 15 minutes by car from Santorini airport, 25 minutes from Fira port. The property offers a free shuttle service from the port, which matters in Santorini where taxis are scarce in peak season and the roads are narrow enough that driving yourself requires confidence and a small car.

The entrance and reception section at 1:28 sets the architectural tone. The design is by Liakos & Associates Architects – a contemporary Cycladic language that takes the whitewashed organic forms of traditional Santorini architecture and pares them back to something more minimalist without losing the cultural reference. Custom furnishings in suede, copper, and smoked wood throughout. The materials palette references the volcanic geology of the island – literally born from lava – and the result is interiors that feel warm and dark in contrast to the blinding white exterior and the blue-and-gold view.

The gym at reception is small and honest about being small. The vlog covers it briefly and moves on, which is the appropriate response. For a 13-room boutique property this is not a destination gym. It’s a treadmill and some weights for guests who need to maintain a routine. There is no spa at CAVO TAGOO Santorini – worth knowing before booking if a spa is central to your stay.

ROKA restaurant and the infinity pool

Covered from 3:18 to 5:59. Two things that define the social spaces of the property and both deliver properly.

ROKA serves Japanese cuisine – which sounds incongruous on a Greek island until you remember that Japanese restaurants have been operating successfully in Santorini for years on the straightforward logic that excellent fish in a Mediterranean setting translates across culinary traditions. The dinner section at 30:19 covers ROKA in more detail and the food quality is visibly at the level a $2,540/night property needs its restaurant to be. The setting – caldera views from the restaurant terrace – makes the already good Japanese food better by default.

The heated infinity pool with floating sun loungers is the property’s most photographed feature and the reason those 400,000 Instagram followers exist. The pool is positioned directly on the caldera edge with the volcanic crater and Aegean extending to the horizon. The floating loungers allow you to lie in the water and look directly at one of the most dramatic natural views on the planet. The sunset section of the vlog from 23:17 to 30:19 covers this and the footage does it better than description can. It’s the kind of thing that earns the price of the stay just from that one afternoon.

The walk to the suite

Covered at 5:59 and worth paying attention to for anyone with mobility considerations. Santorini’s caldera properties are built into the volcanic cliff face and navigating them involves stairs – often many stairs. The walk from reception to the suite at CAVO TAGOO involves steps and uneven stone paths typical of all Cycladic cliff-side architecture. It’s not extreme but it’s not flat. The vlog covers this honestly and the path through the property also shows the architectural quality of the spaces between reception and the rooms – the design attention extends to the circulation paths, not just the suites themselves.

The suite – CAVO TAGOO Suite with Pool

Room tour from 7:05 to 15:50 – over eight minutes, appropriate for 41 sqm of carefully designed suite above the Santorini caldera. Here’s what the footage covers:

• 🛏️ Bedroom – the suede, copper, and smoked wood material palette in full effect. Dark, warm, sensual interiors that create a strong contrast with the white exterior and the blue view beyond the glass. The bed faces the caldera. The ceiling is low in the traditional Cycladic manner. The whole room creates an atmosphere of deliberate shelter – you’re in a cave with a view of the world, which is exactly what volcanic island architecture should feel like
• 🪟 Floor-to-ceiling caldera view – the glass opens the bedroom and living area directly onto the terrace and the view. The caldera is not glimpsed through a small window. It’s the entire fourth wall of the room
• 🛁 Bathroom – proper scale for the suite category, natural stone surfaces, rain shower, soaking tub. The bathroom design maintains the dark warm palette of the rest of the suite rather than pivoting to the clinical white that hotel bathrooms default to
• 🏊 Private pool terrace – the terrace extends from the suite with the private pool directly above the caldera. The pool is properly sized for two people – not a token plunge pool. The terrace has day bed seating and the caldera view from water level in the pool is the specific perspective that justifies this category over a hot tub suite
• 🎨 Custom furnishings – the suede upholstery, copper hardware, and smoked wood elements are handcrafted to the property rather than procured from a hospitality supplier. At 13 rooms the design attention per-suite is what you’d expect and it shows in the details

At 41 sqm this is not a large suite by international luxury hotel standards. The Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton equivalent would be 60-80 sqm minimum. What CAVO TAGOO trades on is not size but location, view, and design intensity – and the 8-minute tour footage shows enough spatial and aesthetic interest that the 41 sqm doesn’t feel limiting. The terrace extends the effective living space significantly and you’re spending most of your time outdoors at a property like this anyway.

The floating breakfast

From 37:03 to 40:10 and this is the Instagram moment the property is known for beyond the pool. The floating breakfast is exactly what it sounds like – a tray with breakfast items floated to you in your private pool. Fresh pastries, fruit, eggs, yogurt, coffee, juice, the full Greek island breakfast spread delivered on a floating wooden tray while you’re sitting in your private pool above the caldera.

It photographs extraordinarily well and the experience is genuinely as good as it looks. The combination of warm pool water, morning Santorini light, the caldera below you, and breakfast arriving on the water surface is the specific thing you’ll remember about this stay for the next ten years. It’s not cheap – it’s part of a breakfast package that adds to the room rate – but on a $2,540/night stay the floating breakfast is the detail that earns the memory rather than just the bill.

The checkout at 40:10 shows the billing statement, which is useful real-world pricing context: the floating breakfast is charged separately. Budget for it when calculating the total stay cost rather than being surprised on checkout.

Sunset on the floating lounger

The sunset section from 23:17 to 30:19 is the longest continuous sequence in the vlog outside the room tour and it earns the runtime. Lying on a floating lounger in a heated infinity pool while the sun drops behind the caldera rim and the Aegean changes color below you is the experience CAVO TAGOO sells and the footage confirms it delivers. The pool faces west over the caldera – the orientation is deliberate and correct for catching the Santorini sunset from the water.

For context on Santorini sunsets: Oia’s famous sunset requires getting there early and competing with crowds. The CAVO TAGOO pool sunset is private, in water, with a drink, with the same sun and the same view. The crowds in Oia are the product of the place being at the right elevation and orientation. Imerovigli at 300 meters has the same orientation and is 30 meters higher. The sunset from the pool here is objectively a better experience than standing in the Oia crowd, even if the Oia photos are more iconic.

Walk to Imerovigli village and beyond

From 15:50 to 21:54. The 20-minute walk south from the hotel to Imerovigli village is covered in the vlog and the caldera path it follows is one of the best walks on the island. Whitewashed houses, cobblestone alleys, blue-domed churches that have been photographed so many times they’ve become clichés and remain genuinely beautiful anyway. The village has proper local restaurants alongside the tourist options and the elevation gives views that justify the “Balcony to the Aegean” label.

The path continues south from Imerovigli toward Fira – the full caldera trail from Oia to Fira is one of Santorini’s signature walks, and CAVO TAGOO’s location puts you at the midpoint of the most dramatic section. The vlog also covers a preview of Fira village at 41:05 for those who want to understand the full context of the island’s main settlement versus the quieter Imerovigli base.

Santo Wines winery

Covered from 43:35 to the end of the vlog. Santo Wines is Santorini’s most famous winery and visitor experience – a cooperative winery on the caldera rim between Imerovigli and Fira with panoramic views, a tasting terrace, and the island’s signature Assyrtiko white wine done properly. The caldera terrace at Santo Wines is one of the better places to experience an Aegean sunset with a glass of local wine if the hotel pool sunset has been claimed by clouds on a given evening.

Santorini Assyrtiko is worth understanding: the island’s volcanic soil and the unique basket-weaving training method for the vines produces a white wine with a minerality and acidity that’s specific to this place and genuinely exceptional. It’s not a souvenir wine. Serious wine people come to Santorini specifically for Assyrtiko. Santo Wines is the accessible introduction; Domaine Sigalas and Hatzidakis are the more serious producers if you want to go deeper.

The price and practical booking details

The CAVO TAGOO Suite with Pool came in at 2,310 EUR / $2,540 USD including tax for the July 2024 stay. This is peak season – July and August are the most expensive months in Santorini. Rate context:

• 📅 Shoulder season value – May, June, and September offer the same property at meaningfully lower rates with weather that’s still excellent. June in Santorini is warm, not yet at peak heat, and the island is less crowded. For a 13-room property where the experience is fundamentally about the view and the intimacy, June and September are arguably better than July-August
• ⏰ Book very early – with 13 rooms, peak season dates sell out months in advance. If July or August is your window, booking 6+ months out is not excessive
• 🍳 Floating breakfast budget – add the floating breakfast cost to your total calculation when comparing rates. The checkout billing statement in the vlog shows it’s a separate line item. Worth it, but not free
• 🚗 Free shuttle – the shuttle from Fira port is free and worth using rather than fighting for a taxi in peak season

CAVO TAGOO is an independent property – no Marriott, Hyatt, or Hilton affiliation. The points angle:

• 💳 Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts – Amex Platinum’s FHR program covers independent luxury properties and CAVO TAGOO may be bookable through it, adding room upgrades, complimentary breakfast, noon check-in, 4pm late checkout, and a property credit at the direct rate. Check current FHR availability
• 🏨 Virtuoso network – independent luxury hotels of this caliber are often Virtuoso members, adding the same benefit layer through a Virtuoso travel agent at no extra cost over direct
• 💳 Pay with points via travel portals – Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Citi ThankYou Points can offset hotel charges through their respective travel portals, making the cash rate partially subsidized

Frequently asked questions

📹 Video by ST Travel