Pylos
Pylos sits on the Bay of Navarino in the south-western Peloponnese, where Messenia's olive country runs down to one of the finest natural harbours in the Mediterranean. For most luxury travellers the address is Costa Navarino, the resort coast a little to the north; the town itself, small and arcaded around a single square, is the working counterpoint.
The bay is closed off by the long island of Sphacteria, and the sheltered water inside it has carried more history than its calm suggests. In 425 BC an Athenian force trapped and took a Spartan garrison on Sphacteria, one of the turning actions of the Peloponnesian War. In October 1827 the combined British, French, and Russian fleets destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian navy here at the Battle of Navarino, the engagement that effectively secured Greek independence. The Ottoman Niokastro, the fortress above the southern entrance, is among the best-preserved in Greece and holds a small museum.
Costa Navarino is the reason most guests come, and the most ambitious resort development in the country. Built over the past fifteen years across several sites — Navarino Dunes, Navarino Bay, and the hillside Navarino Romanos among them — it folds golf, a serious spa, and a genuine commitment to Messenian landscape and agriculture into a single estate. It is a destination in its own right; whether you ever leave its grounds is a real question, and the answer should be yes.
The natural set-pieces are close at hand. Voidokilia, a few minutes north, is a near-perfect crescent of pale sand enclosing a shallow lagoon, backed by the Gialova wetland — the southernmost important migratory stop in the Balkans, home in spring to flamingos and to the African chameleon, which lives almost nowhere else in Europe. On the ridge above stands the Palace of Nestor, the best-preserved Mycenaean palace on the mainland, where the Linear B tablets that proved the script an early form of Greek were unearthed in 1939.
South of the bay, the Venetian sea-castles of Methoni and Koroni — the eyes of the Republic that once guarded the route to the Levant — each repay a half-day, Methoni's curtain wall running out across a causeway to a small fortified tower standing in the water. Kalamata airport is about an hour east and takes direct European flights in season; Athens is nearer four hours by road. Three or four nights, with a hire car, is the right shape.
House Notes
The address
Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino — the group's first house in Greece — sits on its own reach of Navarino Bay, 99 suites and villas stepped down toward the water. The five-bedroom Royal Villa, by MKV Design, keeps a private spa, fitness room, and pool; the standalone villas each take a pool of their own and an open view across the bay to Sphacteria.
The courses
Costa Navarino is the golf address of southern Europe, four courses across two sites. The Dunes Course, by Bernhard Langer with European Golf Design, was the first signature course in Greece; Robert Trent Jones Jr laid the Bay Course beside it, its par-three second hole hugging the shoreline of Navarino Bay. Up at Navarino Hills, José María Olazábal designed the Hills Course and the International Olympic Academy Course.
Palaiokastro
Palaiokastro, the castle the Franks raised in the 13th century on the headland above Voidokilia, keeps the older watch over the bay; Venetians and Ottomans held it after, until it was abandoned in 1573 once Niokastro rose across the water. The climb up from the lagoon is steep and rocky, and below the walls opens the Cave of Nestor.
The Griffin Warrior
In 2015, on the first day of a new season at the Palace of Nestor, Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis of the University of Cincinnati opened an undisturbed shaft grave in an olive grove at Ano Englianos. The Bronze Age warrior inside lay with more than 1,400 objects, among the richest intact graves found in Greece in decades. The finds are conserved for display at the Archaeological Museum of Chora, inland from the bay.
The spa
Anazoe Spa, shared between the Romanos and the Westin at Navarino Dunes, builds its signature treatments on oleotherapy — olive-oil and herb regimens drawn from prescriptions inscribed on clay tablets found in the ruins of the Palace of Nestor nearby. The anti-inflammatory massage oil is pressed from sweet almonds and the estate's own olives.
The vines
Navarino Vineyards, the estate's own 550 acres in the hills behind Pylos, carries the place's history into the glass. The 1827 wines take their name from the year of the sea battle fought in the bay below; the KOTYLE label is named for the kotyle, the ancient drinking cup. Both pour across the resort's tables, a Messenian answer to the cellar.
Koroni
Koroni's castle, which the Venetians rebuilt in 1209 to hold the sea road east, is the rare fortress never abandoned: within the walls, lanes of Venetian doorways climb to the Timios Prodromos convent, founded in the early 20th century at the fortress's highest point and kept by its nuns. The drive down the Messenian gulf from Pylos is the better part of an hour.
Polylimnio
Inland from the bay, past the village of Charavgi, the Polylimnio gorge holds a chain of 15 pools and waterfalls in deep shade — emerald water, smoothed rock, the Kalouda fall dropping some 25 metres into the lake beneath it. A walking path threads the pools; sturdy shoes and an early start before the day-trippers are the counsel. It lies 34 kilometres from Kalamata.
The larder
Navarino Icons, the food-and-craft line Costa Navarino launched in 2011, presses its extra-virgin olive oil from the Messenian groves and turns the rest of the harvest into olives, pasteli, and fruit spoon-sweets. The same line commissions ceramics and paper goods from local makers, their motifs drawn from Mycenaean pattern. A considered thing to carry home.
The table
On the pedestrian seafront at Gialova, Notre Maison is the kitchen worth booking — a family house run by Giannis with his wife Kiki and their children, the cooking built on what the day brings: fish off the bay, and the wild mushrooms Giannis forages himself on Taygetos. The tables sit a few steps from the water, Sphacteria across the strait.