Domes Miramare is an adults-only house at Moraitika, on the east coast of Corfu. The airport is 17 km away and the Old Town a quarter of an hour by car. The house stands in an olive grove of 38 acres, with 650 m of private coastline, and its buildings are kept low enough to sit under the olive trees a century old along the shore. The youngest guest it takes is 16.
Gerasimos Patronikolas, married into the Onassis family, commissioned the original complex in 1960, and Charalambos Sfaellos drew it. It became the family’s Ionian showpiece, and President Eisenhower and Maria Callas are among the guests the house still names from that era.
Domes Resorts rebuilt the complex with Liakos Architecture Associates. All 34 buildings were taken back to contemporary specification while keeping the modernist forms they were drawn in, and Kristina Zanic Design Consultants drew the interiors. The completed renovation gives the house 84 rooms, 32 suites and 24 villas. It reopened under the Domes Resorts brand in July 2018 and converted to Marriott’s Luxury Collection on 1 August that year.
The two wings
The house reads as two parts. The Seafront Wing lies at the water, its suites and villas opening onto the beach or a sea view, in creamy tones with natural wood and art chosen for the rooms. Its retreats reach the private beach directly, through the old olive gardens. The Panoramic Wing sits on the hillside above, its terraces facing the horizon and the sunset, and it carries two large pools, the PALS gym and the spa. There are four pools in all. A private pier runs off the shore, and the house keeps a speedboat there, the Miramaretta, which it uses to take guests to restaurants elsewhere on the island.
Rooms, villas and the Haute Living Selection
Accommodation starts at a 29 sq m retreat and runs up through suites and residences to the 220 sq m HRH Ivory Villa, whose bathroom has a private hammam. The Haute Living Selection is a hotel within the hotel, with a lounge of its own, the Haute Living Room, open to cardholders alone. A separate VIP section is let privately and holds two large villas with swimming pools of their own.
The tables
The house has three restaurants and four bars. Makris, under chef patron Petros Dimas, is the fine-dining room. It opened here in 2018 and takes its name from Makris, the ancient name of Corfu, and the cooking is contemporary Greek, served either as a comfort menu or as a set degustation. Antonino’s draws on beachside Corfu in the 1950s and 1960s, with vintage rooms, handmade pizzas cut with scissors and pasta. The seaside patio at 1962 By the Sea is a Greek taverna by day and a more refined Greek kitchen at night, with the water running out to the horizon. The Raw Bar serves premium Asian cooking from early evening to after hours. The Blu Bar revives the bar that drew royalty and European society here in the 1960s, and the Verde Pool Bar sits between the main pool and the beach, where every lounger has a call button.
Soma Spa and the olive grove
Soma Spa ‘The Finest’ is the largest of the group’s spas, built around a large indoor pool and borrowing from the ancient Greek bathhouse, with four treatment rooms. The PALS gym has indoor and open-air space for weight training, yoga and Pilates. A private tennis court sits inside the olive grove, and the house also runs watersports, seaside training and wellness workshops.
Who is this for
Two people travelling without children, drawn to a house with a documented past. The lawn runs down to white marble steps cut into the shallows, where the water is still enough to swim straight off the stone. The grove climbs a green foothill behind the shore, and the water on this coast is silent. Beyond the gates the island fills a week without effort: the Patounis Soap Factory, the ceramics of Myrto Zirini, locally produced wines and the Corfiot kitchen.
