Vaporia is the quarter where Ermoupoli’s shipowners and merchants built their houses out over the water, beside the church of Saint Nicholas. Boutique Hotel Ploes is one of those houses: a two-wing neoclassical mansion of about 150 years, at 2 Apollonos Street, which has been a hotel of eight rooms since 2008.
Ermoupoli is the capital town of Syros. It is a town of neoclassical mansions, of tarsanas, the traditional shipyards, of a theatre built as a miniature of an opera house, of a town hall built like a palace and of rose-flavoured loukoumi, the local sweet.
Access to the sea is direct: guests swim from the hotel itself. The house describes itself as a traditional A’ class hotel.
Three families and a renovation
From the nineteenth century onward the mansion was lived in by three shipping families in turn: Negreponte, then Samios, then Lorentzos. The last renovation of the fabric was finished at the end of the twentieth century by two sisters, Maria and Kalliope Giatrakos. The hotel’s own description calls the result the best surviving example of neoclassical heritage on Syros. In 2008 the Lorentzos family converted the house into a hotel of eight rooms, and it has stayed at that count since.
The town earned houses of that size. Ermoupoli was founded by refugees after 1821 and within a few decades it was the first port of Greece and a trading centre of the Mediterranean. The first Greek steamship was built in its yards in 1854.
The terrace and the yard
The paved terrace was designed for the purpose and sits above the water, with the private swimming area and its sun beds below. Indoors there is a lobby. The cafe bar, Plous, is in the front sea yard with the Aegean in view, and it serves breakfast, dinner and drinks through the day and the evening. Private and corporate dinners are taken there too. The house also takes conferences and exhibitions, with sound-proofed halls, a corporate meeting area, screens, projectors, Wi-Fi and adjustable lighting.
The eight rooms
The eight rooms are let as five types: a deluxe double on the veranda level, a deluxe double or twin with a sea view, another facing the town, a deluxe honeymoon room with a town view and an executive suite with a front sea view.
The rugs are handmade and the chandeliers Venetian. Bathrooms are in marble, and a steam room and a whirlpool bath come with some of the rooms. Windows, balconies and terraces give on to the Aegean and the town. Every room has air conditioning, broadband, cable television, a CD and DVD player, a mini-bar and a safe, and laundry, dry cleaning, massage and a laptop can be asked for.
The walls hold a collection of late twentieth-century work by Greek artists.
The address
Walking to the door amounts to a small tour of Hermoupolis. The mansion stands a short walk from Miaoulis Square, the town hall and the Apollon Theatre, and from the church of Saint Nicholas, the Catholic church of Evangelistria and the port. The buildings on either side are monumental too. One was the first high school of modern Greece, where Eleftherios Venizelos stayed; the other, now the seat of the Aegean borough, was the Tsiropinas family’s estate.
The house is seasonal, and it runs from April to October each year. It opened on 3 April 2026 and will close on 13 October 2026.
Who is this for
Ploes suits a traveller who wants a room in the middle of Hermoupolis and a house small enough that eight keys are the whole of it. Couples can take the honeymoon room, with its decorated ceiling and chandelier. The hotel arranges car hire, yacht rental, cultural tours and travel guidance for its guests. The china is the hotel’s own, and the paintings in the rooms are by contemporary Greek artists.
