Citta dei Nicliani is a hotel inside a Niklian tower at Koita, in the Deep Mani. Koita is one of the oldest and best known villages on the peninsula, and it is tower country: the stone towers around it were built by feuding families between the 14th and 19th centuries. This one went up in 1750, stands in Upper Koita, and is a designated ancient monument. Nine rooms are inside it. What makes it worth the drive is the building, the cellar it keeps, and a kitchen that buys at the morning market.
The address is Koita, Deep Mani, Laconia, in the part of the peninsula that stayed closed longest. The Deep Mani was shut to outsiders until a pass was cut over the Taygetus mountains, and travellers who came in the 1950s met people who had never seen anyone from beyond it.
What the building has been
Koita was the birthplace of the Nicliani, one of the strong Maniot clans, who in 1618 wrote with other large families to the Italian duke Carlo Gonzaga asking his help for the liberation of Greece. He answered that he would give it. Mani’s last great vendetta ran in 1871 between the Kaourianoi and the Kourianoi, a feud so wide across western Mani that the army came in with artillery to end it, and the final stages of the negotiations were held in this building.
From 1910 it housed the Greek Royal Gendarmerie, which oversaw the region from Koita. The Gendarmerie stopped work there under the German occupation, part of the occupying army was installed in 1941, and the forces of ELAS held the building in 1943 and burned the records kept in it when they left. It then stood empty for decades.
It was bought in 2006, by Ilias Sepsas, who had spent years living and working abroad and who is from the Mani himself. The restoration added an extension in traditional Maniot style, and it opened as a hotel in 2011. The family runs it: Ilias and Tania, with their son Panagiotis. Tania Sepsa took the interior design, setting contemporary comforts against exposed stone, beamed ceilings and framed etchings.
The rooms
Engravings by Miltos Pantelias, stone sculptures by Irini Gonou, and bare stone walls are what the room types have in common. Floors are terracotta tile or wood. Beds are dressed in Guy Laroche linen. One Character room and one Timeless have a private terrace of their own, laid in fossil tile. Timeless and Grande run over two levels, and Character and Premium do not.
The largest rooms are La Grotta and Grande, 30 sq m over two levels. The hotel dates La Grotta to the 11th century, and the original architecture left it a single small window, which is the whole of its daylight; a wooden staircase climbs from it to a loft. Grande has a wooden staircase of its own, up to a loft reading room.
The cellar
Over 100 Greek labels, the oldest 1944, line the cellar. Beside the Greek list the hotel keeps some of the most famous Grand Cru in their best vintages, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Château Margaux and Château Lafite among them, and bottles chosen from their best years, such as the 1982 Château Mouton and the 1990 Petrus. It pours into Riedel’s sommelier series. Tastings are held at the hotel or at wineries in Nemea, and a tasting can be built around a guest’s own picks from the list. The family also trades wine under its own name, Nicliani Cellars, from the same village and the same telephone number, with en primeur releases, which are sold before the wine is bottled.
The table
The menu changes daily on what the morning market has, and Ilias Sepsas cooks. Dinner is built on traditional recipes, with a bottle from the cellar. Between late October and early December the hotel arranges a visit to a local olive press while the oil is being made, and the visit is included in a stay.
Who is this for
This suits a traveller who comes for the building and for hard, empty country. The way in is an arched doorway into a cobbled courtyard, and a stone terrace looks out over olive groves, with a small plunge pool beside it. Breakfast is a platter of Greek dishes, among them syglino, the Maniot cured ham, and lalaggia, a Maniot fried bread. More than 20 marked trails cross the country around the village, and a car is needed here: Kalamata airport is 100 km away, a two-hour drive.
