Walking in the village on the rymidia, as narrow streets are called, you will see and admire the unique architecture of the village.
Typical examples of the architecture are the captains' houses and the cave houses.
The captain houses are the neo-classical two-storied houses. Right at the front of the building, one can see the special crafts work of the neo-classical age. These houses belonged to the captains and their families. Built with local materials, mostly red and black stone. Near the foundations of the house, rainwater is collected from the sayings of the roof to a cistern. Behind the cistern is the hemp, a large shady room with a small window. The room was used for wine production, which includes pressing grapes and storing wine products. The storage is usually wine, wine press, flax and barrels. The interiors of the captains' houses had wide floor boards, groin vaults ceilings, painted walls and was decorated by elegant furniture, carved mirrors and lamps. All these decorations were gathered from the long voyages at sea of the captains. The decorations origins can be tracked from places like Odessa, Venice, Bucharest and Alexandria. The devastating earthquake of 1956 had a large impact on the integrity of the houses, but efforts of reconstruction and rehabilitation are made nowdays.
The cave houses carved into the rock, are the simplest form of house in Oia. The builders of these cave houses tried to gain the necessary space despite the strong inclination of the rocky soil, all houses have the same properties, namely they are deep long-narrowed and have a vaulted ceiling. The reason for this lies in the construction of these buildings, they were literally dug out of hard volcanic rock (Aspa), which is a combination of mixed granules and porcelain. Since these houses are dug out, good ventilation and light is only accessible at the front. The front has in the middle a door, and on both sides windows. Often the door itself contains a small window called "skylight window". Usually the hall is split in two rooms: a large room at the front called "sala" and small one in the back called "sotokamari", which were used as a bedroom. The toilet, called "brovas", is a separated building and has also a vaulted ceiling. In the village a saying goes around: "House's as much as you can fit and plain's as much as you like". These words were said by the rich people living on the rocks and by people deprived of plains. It is an ironic phrase because people without plains often were the builders of the cave houses. On top of that the cave houses were mainly inhabited by ship crew members.
Source of this article is the book: "ΟΙΑ, Τόπος και Ιστορία" (OIA, Place and History) by the author Kadio Kolymva.