Deos takes its name from the ancient Greek word for awe. It stands on the hillside above Mykonos Town, at eye level with the horizon, with panoramic views over the Aegean. Seven minutes on foot takes you down the steps to Chora and the old port, into the whitewashed alleys with their boutiques, waterfront bars and restaurants. Electric golf carts make the same trip for anyone who would rather not walk back up.
Deos occupies a 12,000 m² site, laid out as an open-air village of communal piazzas, planted ground and pergola-shaded walkways. The building reads as interlocking cubic volumes with native planting on their roofs, set into the slope so that the ridgeline above the town survives. Galal Mahmoud, GM Architects’ founder, drew it.
The architect’s reading of the island
Mahmoud worked from a modern Cycladic language of whitewashed cubic houses and planted roofs, and his brief was to rebuild a village of that kind in contemporary terms. “It’s very much vernacular, but at the same time it’s not a copy-paste,” he said of the design. The materials available now are nothing like the ones that gave the old houses their character, “so we decided to extract the language and features that would give the same feel and lived experience, and transform that into something more contemporary.” The village plan lets every guest room and every public area take an open, unobstructed sea view. Mahmoud wanted that view to be the first thing a guest meets on arrival, and the connection between indoors and outdoors kept.
The partitions between the marble bathrooms and the bedrooms are sliding glass panels with Greek lace laminated inside them, the lace the women of the village made for their own furniture. The interior woodwork is toned down to the colour of driftwood found on the island’s beaches in winter. Stone and marble are quarried in Greece, and almost every finish and piece of furniture was sourced there too, in a neutral palette that leaves the window to do the work.
Luggage, housekeeping and every other back-of-house movement run on underground routes, out of guest sight.
Rooms, suites and residences
The accommodation starts at the Delta Room, 30 m² with a furnished terrace carrying a hot tub or a pool, and runs up through the Beta and Lamda suites to the residences. The largest is the Omega Residence, 120 m² across two units, opening onto an 80 m² furnished terrace with a private pool and sea views; its semi-open marble bathroom has a deep soak tub and double vanities, screened from the living area. The Zeta Maisonette and the Omicron Residence are laid out over two levels, each with a terrace pool and the town below. In the lobby, Fred&Juul’s cast bronze and aluminium Doris table set, drawn from the Doric column, anchors the room.
The table, the spa and the beach
Epico is the restaurant, an elegant room with views over Mykonos Town, serving à la carte and dégustation menus built on creative readings of Cycladic flavours, with wines chosen by the sommelier. Reservations are essential. Epico Bar is the deck alongside it, open through the day for cocktails and apéritifs, with 180-degree views. Sana, the spa, has a marble indoor pool, a sauna and a steam room, and a group of therapy suites, one of them for couples, with treatments drawing on locally harvested botanicals. For the sea itself there is Almiriki, Agrari, the group’s own beach club, reached by complimentary round-trip shuttle: shaded daybeds, wellness cabanas under the tamarisks, a pool deck and a Greek taverna. Delos, the sanctuary island, is 30 minutes by ferry from the town harbour.
The family that owns it
Deos belongs to the Myconian Collection, founded 1979 by George and Elefteria Daktylides and held today by their four sons. The family has been building on Mykonos for nearly five decades.
Who is this for
Deos suits a traveller who wants architecture to be part of the trip and the town within reach without a car. The hill keeps its distance from the noise: days go slowly around the infinity pool, where the water meets the Aegean horizon, and the seasonal meltemi wind takes the edge off the July and August heat. There is a gym and a small boutique for the hours in between. Evenings belong to Chora below, and the quiet returns as soon as you are back up.
